The  Qhurch 
In   the  Province  of  North   Carolina, 

BY 

Rev.  Jos.   Blount  Cheshire,  Jr.,  D.  D. 

AS  READ  BEFORE 

THE  JOINT  CENTENNIAL  CONVENTION 

OF  THE 

Dioceses  of  North  and  East  Carolina, 

HELD  AT ■ 

Tarboro,   N.   C,   May,    1890. 


•■' 


»•* 


THE  CHURCH  IN 
THE  PROVINCE  OF  NORTH  CAROLINA. 

BY    REV.    JOS.     BLOUNT    CHESHIRE,    JR. 

The  Church  owes  its  first  theoretical  introduction  into 
North  Carolina  to  the  Englishman's  characteristic  desire 
to  reproduce  English  institutions  in  every  corner  of  the 
earth  where  he  makes  for  himself  a  home:  its  real  begi n- 
nings  came  from  the  christian  zeal  of  a  few  prominent 
colonial  Churchmen,  co-operating  with  the  Society  for  the 
Propagation  of  the  Gospel ,  in  endeavoring  to  supply  the 
scattered  colonists  with  the  ministrations  of  their  mother 
Church. 

The  name  Carolina  was  applied  by  the  French  Hugue- 
not settlers  of  Florida  in  the  years  1562  and  1564  to  that 
part  of  the  American  continent  lying  north  of  the  Spanish 
possessions,  in  honor  of  Charles  IX.  of  France.  In  1629 
Charles  I.  of  England  granted  to  his  Attorney  General, 
Sir  Robert  Heath,  the  territory  between  31  °  and  360 
north  latitude,  and  erected  the  same  into  a  Province  by 
the  name  of  the  Province  of  Carolina,  reviving  the  old 
French  name,  but  doubtless  with  reference  to  his  own. 
This  Province  of  Carolina  was  to  be  held  of  the  King  and 
his  successors  in  Capite  by  Knight's  service,  by  rendering, 
besides  other  things,  "one  circle  of  gold  formed  in  the 
fashion  of  a  crown,  of  the  weight  of  twenty  ounces,  with 
this  inscription  iugraved  upon  it:  DEUS  Coronet  Opus 
Suum,  whensoever  and  as  often  as  it  shall  happen,  that 
we,  our  heirs  or  successors  shall   enter  the  said  Region." 


Nothing  was  done  towards  the  settlement  of  the  country 
under  this  Patent  of  Charles  I.  but  it  is  interesting  as 
being  the  formal  act  whereby  the  name  Carolina  was 
authoritatively  affixed  by  the  English  Crown  to  the  region 
lying  between  Virginia  and  the  Spanish  settlements  to  the 
southward. 

The  first  attempt  at  the  actual  settlement  of  the  country, 
after  the  failure  of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh's  schemes,  so  far  as 
we  know,  was  made  by  a  clergyman  of  the  Church.  In 
1653  the  Virginia  Assembly  passed  an  act  for  the  encour- 
agement of  "Roger  Green,  Clark,"  i.e.  clergyman,  in  set- 
tling the  Moratoc  or  Roanoke  river  and  the  south  side  of 
Chowan  river.  Nothing,  however,  seems  to  have  come  of 
this. 

The  permanent  settlement  of  North  Carolina  is  usually 
reckoned  from  the  date  of  George  Durant's  deed  for 
Durant'sNeck  in  Perquimans  County,  March,  1661--2.  At 
this  time  the  Governor  of  Virginia  seems  to  have  exercised 
some  sort  of  authority  over  the  territory,  as  representing  the 
English  crown,  but  in  1663,  and  in  1665,  Charles  II.  issued 
his  two  Charters  to  the  Lords  Proprietors,  granting  them 
the  Province  of  Carolina;  the  limits  in  the  former  Charter 
being  identical  with  those  of  Sir  Robert  Heath's  Patent 
of  1629,  while  the  latter  extended  those  limits  two  degrees 
on  the  south,  and  a  half  degree  on  the  north,  making  the 
bounds  of  the  Province  from  290  to  36°3o/  north  lati- 
tude, and  from  the  Atlantic  Ocean  westward  to  the  South 
Sea. 

Both  the  Charters  of  Charles  II.  expressly  provide  for  a 
religious  establishment,  in  accordance  with  the  ecclesiasti- 
cal laws  of  England,  and  for  the  building  and  endowment 
of  Churches,  Chapels  and  Oratories;  though  they  permit 
the  Lords  Proprietors  to  grant  liberty  of  conscience  and  of 
worship,  upon  such  terms  and  under  such  restrictions  as 
they  may  think  proper,  to  those  persons  who  could  not  in 
their  private  conscience  conform  to  the  Church  of  England. 


In  accordance  with  the  provisions  of  the  Charters,  the 
Lords  Proprietors  in  their  "proposals"  for  settlers  adver- 
tised far  and  wide  the  advantages  of  their  Colony  of  Caro- 
lina on  account  of  the  religious  liberty  to  be  allowed  all  its 
inhabitants,  upon  condition  that  they  would  not  interfere 
with  the  like  liberty  of  others,  and  that  they  should  be 
obedient  to  the  laws  of  the  country,  as  well  ecclesiastical 
as  civil.  These  proposals  were  industriously  circulated, 
especially  in  New  England  and  Barbadoes,  and  the 
general  promise  of  religious  toleration  allowed  by  the 
Charters  became  widely  known  before  the  Proprietors  pub- 
lished any  scheme  of  government  for  their  Province.  In- 
deed, the  Lords  Proprietors  seem  at  one  time  to  have  con- 
templated granting  to  the  people  the  right  of  regulating 
ecclesiastical  affairs  at  their  own  pleasure.  In  1667  their 
instructions  to  Governor  Stevens  seem  to  go  to  this  length, 
as  they  offer  to  allow  the  Assembly  of  the  Province  to 
choose  such  ministers  as  they  may  prefer,  and  pledge  the 
Lords  Proprietors  not  to  interfere  with  them.  No  such 
action,  however,  was  taken  by  the  Assembly. 

In  j  669  the  Lords  Proprietors  published  their  famous 
Fundamental  Constitutions  of  Carolina.  These 
were  never  enforced  in  North  Carolina,  but  they  are  to  be 
noted  as  being  the  first  formal  establishment  of  the  Church 
in  the  Colony  in  theory.  It  has  frequently  been  alleged 
that  those  clauses  of  the  Constitutions  which  provide  that 
the  Church  of  England  shall  be  the  only  Church  supported 
by  grants  from  the  public  funds  ( it  "being  the  only  true 
and  orthodox,  and  the  national  religion  of  all  the  King's 
dominions"),  are  contrary  to  the  privileges  secured  to  the 
people  by  the  Charters.  But  it  will  be  observed  that  these 
Fundamental  Constitutions,  while  giving  this  support  to 
the  Church,  are  really  much  more  explicit  than  either  of 
the  Charters  in  securing  the  fullest  religious  liberty  to  all 
who  will  subscribe  themselves  believers  in  God,  even  pro- 
viding for  the  case  of  Jews  and  of  the  heathen.      In  provid- 


ing  for  the  support  of  the  Church  they  are  but  carrying 
out  the  plain  requirements  of  the  Charters.  Locke  was 
one  of  the  most  tolerant  of  men,  and  his  hand  is  more 
plainly  seen  in  the  provisions  concerning  religion  than  in 
any  other  part  of  these  "Constitutions;"  but  he  believed 
in  the  principle  of  a  public  religious  establishment,  and  he 
incorporated  it  in  the  instrument.  It  is  further  charac- 
teristic of  Locke  that  the  Fundamental  Constitutions  deny 
all  civil  privileges  to  atheists. 

Thus  in  theory  we  see  the  Church  established  in  the 
Province  of  Carolina.  Whether  we  take  the  Constitutions 
of  Locke  and  the  Lords  Proprietors,  or  the  Charters  of 
Charles  II. ,  to  be  the  fundamental  law— in  either  case  the 
Church  was  "by  law  established"  in  the  Province.  Other 
forms  of  religion  were  to  be  freely  tolerated,  but  this  alone 
was  the  true  and  orthodox  Church,  and  the  national  re- 
ligion of  all  the  King's  dominions. 

But  what  of  the  people  during  all  this  time  ?  They  had 
nothing  to  do  with  all  this  prescribing  of  rights  and  duties 
and  liberties  and  toleration,  and  they  probably  cared  very 
little  about  it.  The  population  in  the  first  instance  had 
come  mostly  from  Virginia  and  had  followed  the  courses  of 
the  creeks  and  rivers  along  the  north  side  of  Albemarle 
Sound.  Later  they  crossed  over  to  Bath,  and  spread  up 
the  Roanoke,  and  began  to  come  into  the  southerly  parts 
of  the  Province  from  New  England  and  Barbadoes.  But 
they  were  mostly  men  of  small  means,  intent  upon  taking 
up  good  lands,  and  careless  of  all  forms  of  religion— though 
owning  some  kind  of  allegiance  to  the  Church  of  England, 
where  they  had  any  religious  preference.  This  is  contrary 
to  the  commonly  accepted  theory  of  our  histories.  They 
would  have  us  believe  that  the  first  Colonists  were  men  of 
great  earnestness  of  religious  feeling,  chiefly  Quakers  and 
Baptists,  who  for  conscience  sake  had  abandoned  their  for- 
mer homes  in  New  England  and  in  Virginia,  to  escape 
from  the  persecution  of  Puritans  and  Calvinists  in  the  one 


and  of  Churchmen  in  the  other.  Every  one  of  our  »State 
historians  accepts  this  view  of  onr  early  settlement  and 
magnifies  it.  I  undertake  to  say  that  is  absolutely  and 
entirely  false;  that  it  not  only  lacks  a  preponderance  of 
testimony  in  its  favor  but  that  it  is  absolutely  itithout  any 
contemporaneous  evidence  whatever.  And  not  only  so, 
but  such  evidence  as  we  have  leads  to  the  conclusion  that 
the  great  majority  of  onr  first  settlers  along  the  north  side 
of  Albemarle  Sound,  up  the  Roanoke,  in  Bath  and  Pamp- 
lico,  and  along  the  mouth  of  the  Cape  Fear,  were  by  descent 
and  by  preference  attached  to  the  Church  of  their  mother 
country— so  far  as  they  had  any  religious  convictions  or 
preferences.  The  space  at  command  is  too  limited  to  al- 
low of  a  satisfactory  discussion  of  so  difficnlt  a  question, 
difficult  not  in  itself,  but  because  it  has  been  so  long  and 
so  persistently  misrepresented.  Only  a  brief  summary  of 
the  evidence  can  be  given. 

"\j  George  Durant's  settlement  was  in  1662;  William  Drum- 
mond  was  appointed  Governor  by  Sir  William  Berkley  in 
1663.  By  the  year  1672  the  number  of  the  colonists  had 
very  considerably  increased  on  the  streams  flowing  into  the 
north  side  of  Albemarle  Sound  and  on  both  sides  of  the 
Chowan  river;  but  the  population  was  almost  exclusively 
confined  to  these  localities.  In  the  Spring  of  1672  William 
Edmundson,  the  first  Quaker  preacher  who  ever  came  to 
North  Carolina,  made  a  dangerous  and  toilsome  journey  on 
foot  from  the  Virginia  settlements  to  visit  a  family  of 
Quakers  living  on  Perquimans  river.  They  had  removed 
to  North  Carolina  from  New  England  in  1665.  When 
upon  a  Sunday  morning  in  the  end  of  March  William  Ed- 
mundson appeared  at  their  house,  and  they  found  that  he 
and  his  two  companions  were  Quakers— or,  in  their 
language,  Friends,  they  were  so  overcome  that  they  wept 
for  joy  "not  having  seen  a  Friend  for  seven  years  be- 
fore." They  soon  called  together  their  neighbors,  who 
by  Edmundson' s  own  testimony  were    utterly  ignorant    of 


his  religious  methods,  and  this  Quaker  preacher  con- 
ducted the  first  public  religious  service  in  Albemarle. 
The  next  day  he  conducted  another  meeting  a  few  miles 
off  across  the  Perquimans  river,  and  Tuesday  he  and  his 
companions  set  out  upon  their  return  to  Virginia,  v  Ed- 
mundson  made  a  number  of  converts  at  these  two  meetings, 
but  his  journal  makes  it  plain  that  Henry  Phillips  and  his 
family  were  the  only  Quakers  whom  he  found  in  the  set- 
tlements. 

In  November  of  the  same  year  George  Fox  also  visited 
the  Colony  of  Albemarle.  Instead  of  breaking  through  the 
swamps  and  forests  by  a  direct  journey  on  foot  to  the  mid- 
dle of  the  settlements,  as  Edmundson  had  done,  he  traveled 
from  Nansemoud  in  Virginia  by  way  of  Sommertown  to 
"Bonner's  Creek,"  i.e.  Bennett's  Creek,  on  horseback ;  and 
leaving  their  horses  there,  he  and  his  companions  took  a 
canoe  and  came  in  by  way  of  the  Chowan  river.  He  held 
a  meeting  at  Hugh  Smith's  on  the  Chowan  (which  he  calls 
"Macocomoeock"),  but  he  tells  us  in  his  journal  that 
there  were  "no  Friends  inhabiting  this  part  of  the  country." 
When  he  reached  the  region  of  Edmundson' s  ministrations 
he  met  with  a  very  favorable  reception,  and  found  evidences 
of  Edmundson' s  preaching  in  one  or  more  persons  who 
had  been  indoctrinated  with  Quaker  principles  thereby. 
Fox  made  a  permanent  impression  upon  the  people  along 
the  north  side  of  Albemarle  Sound,  and  from  this  time  we 
date  the  Quaker  "meetings"  in  the  region  of  Perquimans 
and  Pasquotank.  But  it  is  plain  from  the  journals  of 
these  two  Quaker  preachers,  the  first  who  visited  this 
region,  that  they  found  none  of  their  brethren  in  Albemarle 
save  the  single  family  of  Phillips  on  Perquimans  river. 
Fox  testifies  in  positive  and  unequivocal  language  that 
there  were  none  in  the  western  section  on  Chowan  river; 
and  his  closing  words  with  reference  to  this  visit  are  con- 
clusive as  to  the  general  condition  of  the  whole  Colony  be- 
fore his  coming:      "Having  visited  the  north  part  of  Caro- 


9 

lina,  and  made  a  little  entrance  for  the  truth  among  the 
people  there,  we  began  to  return  again  toward  Virginia." 

These  journals  are  indirectly  of  almost  equal  weight  in 
proving  that  the  Colonists  were  not  Baptists,  as  has  some- 
times been  alleged.  The  fact  that  Fox  and  Edmnndson 
met  with  no  kind  of  religions  worship  or  institutions 
among  the  people,  the  admitted  fact  that  for  ten  years  after 
the  settlement  of  the  country  there  was  no  public  worship 
whatever,  shows  that  the  inhabitants  were  not  religions 
refugees  of  an}-  kind.  Men  who  go  out  into  the  wilderness 
for  freedom  of  religion  are  men  who  care  enough  about 
their  religion  to  give  public  expression  to  it  after  they 
have  gained  the  freedom  which  they  sought.  If  the  men 
who  left  Virginia  and  New  England  to  come  to  Albemarle 
professed  to  be  Baptists  and  Quakers,  and  pretended  to  be 
in  search  of  liberty  of  conscience  and  of  worship,  — "free- 
dom to  worship  God,"— we  can  have  but  little  respect  for 
their  sincerity,  since  in  their  new  homes  the)'  neglected 
the  public  worship  of  God  altogether  for  so  many  years. 

But  we  have  other  most  weighty  testimony  directly  in 
point,  and  in  part  contemporary.  Henderson  Walker 
came  into  the  Colony  about  1679.  He  a^  one  time  or 
another  held  nearly  all  the  most  important  offices  in  the 
government,  dying  in  the  office  of  Governor  in  1704.  He 
was  one  of  the  most  admirable  men  who  ever  administered 
the  affairs  of  Albemarle.  He  had  been  brought  into  per- 
sonal contact  and  intercourse  with  the  men  associated  with 
Duraut  in  the  settlement  of  1662,  and  had  made  minute 
official  investigations  into  the  circumstances  of  that  settle- 
ment. He  had  no  motive  to  tempt  him  to  misrepresent 
the  facts,  and  his  character  is  too  high  to  allow  any  sus- 
picion of  untruthfulness  to  attach  to  his  testimony.  And 
though  his  testimony  is  direct,  it  is  given  incidentally.  It 
was  a  matter  of  no  concern  to  him  what  might  have  been 
the  religious  belief  of  the  first  settlers.  Writing  to  the 
Bishop  of  London    in    1703,    and   describing   the   spiritual 


IO 

destitution  of  the  people,  he  says,  '  'George  Fox,  some  years 
ago,  came  into  these  parts,  and  by  strange  infatuations 
did  infuse  the  Quakers'  principles  into  some  small  number 
of  the  people;  who  did  and  hath  continued  to  grow  ever 
since  very  numerous  by  reason  of  their  yearly  sending  in 
of  men  to  encourage  and  exhort  them  to  their  wicked 
principles. ' '  The  first  two  missionaries  sent  to  North  Caro- 
lina by  the  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel,  for 
permanent  work,  were  the  Rev.  Win.  Gordon  and  the  Rev. 
James  Adams.  They  both  testify_that  the  only  body__Qf 
dissenters  in  the  Colony  were  the  Quakers.  There  were 
none  of  these  in  Chowan,  nor  in  Curratuck,  and  apparently 
none  south  of  the  Sound  in  Pamplico.  They  were  a 
strong  minority  in  Pasquotank,  and  possibly  a  majority  in 
Perquimans.  Both  these  ministers  met  with  a  good  deal 
of  opposition  from  the  Quakers,  and  they  write  fully  and 
freely  upon  the  subject.  It  is  perfectly  certain  from  their 
letters  that  there  were  no  Baptists  at  all  in  the  Colony,  no 
Quakers  to  speak  of  outside  of  the  two  counties  named, 
and  that  the  few  Presbyterians  scattered  about  among  the 
people  willingly  accepted  the  ministrations  of  the  mission- 
aries, and  brought  their  children  to  be  baptized  into  the 
Church.  The  claim  that  the  Quakers  had  been  the 
original  settlers  appears  for  the  first  time  in  Mr.  Gordon's 
report  to  the  Society  May  13th,  1709.  Mr.  Gordon  says 
he  heard  of  such  a  "pretence"  on  their  part;  "but  this," 
he  says,  "(according  to  the  best  accounts  I  could  get) 
seems  false  in  fact,— that  religion  being  scarce  heard  of 
there  till  some  years  after  the  settlement;  it  is  true  some  of 
the  most  ancient  inhabitants,  after  George  Fox  went  over, 
did  turn  Quakers."  Here  is  both  the  statement  of  the 
fact  and  the  explanation  of  the  Quakers'  claim.  They  could 
truly  claim  that  some  of  the  first  settlers  were  Quakers, 
but  they  had  become  Quakers  after  their  settlement  in 
Albemarle.  Even  here,  however,  there  is  no  suggestion 
that  they  had  come  as  religious  refugees. 


1 1 

All  the  early  authorities  go  to  show  that  the  first  settlers 
were  very  much  the  same  class  of  men  as  those  who  on 
our  frontiers  are  to-day  the  pioneers  of  civilization;  men  of 
small  means,  of  restless  spirit,  of  immense  courage  and 
energy  and  independence;  but  careless  in  regard  to  the 
outward  observances  of  religion.  They  were  mostly  of 
English  blood,  and  by  descent  and  by  baptism  members 
of  the  Church  of  England,  but  ignorant  of  her  principles 
and  indifferent  to  her  claims,  though  accustomed  to  profess 
a  certain  kind  of  allegiance  to  her  worship  and  ministry. 
Both  the  charters  of  King  Charles  provided  for  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  Chnrch ;  the  Fundamental  Constitutions, 
published  in  1669,  formally  enacted  that  the  Church  of  the 
mother  country  should  be  the  Church  of  Carolina.  This 
was  known  and  recognized  by  all;  but  they  were  in  no 
hurry  to  lay  taxes  for  the  Church's  support.  They  had 
gotten  along  pretty  well  so  far;  meanwhile  there  were  the 
Quaker  meetings,  the  pious  could  go  to  them.  This  was 
the  condition  of  things  at  the  end  of  the  17th  century. 
With  the  beginning  of  the  18th  there  is  a  faint  stir  of  life. 

Under  God  the   Church  in   America  owes  more  to  the 
Rev.  Thomas  Bray  than  to  any  other  one   man    who  ever 

lived.      He  founded  the   Society   for   Promoting   Christian 

1  » ; — ■ — •. 

Knowledge,  and  the  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  tljg 
Gospel  in  Foreign  Parts:  he  established  public  libraries 
throughout  all  the  American  Colonies;  he  was  instrumen- 
tal in  supplying  schools  and  teachers  for  Indians  and 
negroes  as  well  as  for  the  whites:  and  he  came  over  him- 
self and  labored  for  the  upbuilding  of  the  ehnrch.^as  com- 
missary of  the  Bishop  of  London  in  Maryland.  He  seems 
to  have  proposed  visiting  Albemarle,  for  under  date  of 
December  20th,  1699,  the  Lords  Proprietors  wrote  to  the 
Governor  and  Council  concerning  "the  Reverend  Doctor 
Bray,  a  learned,  pious,  and  charitable  man,  coming  into 
America  Suffragan  and  Commissioner  to  the  Bishop  of 
London,    your   Diocesan,    and   designing    to    give    you    a 


12 

visit."  They  are  directed  to  entertain  him,  and  to  charge 
the  cost  to  the  public  account.  He  did  not  make  the  pur- 
posed visit  to  Albemarle,  but  he  sent  a  number  of  tracts 
and  catechisms  for  popular  distribution,  and  a  little  later 
he  sent  a  clergyman,  one  Daniel  Brett,  and  ^ioo  worth 
of  books  for  a  public  library  to  be  kept  at  Bath.  We 
know  nothing  of  Mr.  Brett,  but  that  he  proved  to  be  an 
unworthy  man  who  brought  great  grief  and  shame  to  the 
friends  of  the  Church.  After  about  six  mouths  service  he 
disappears  from  our  view. 

But  the  incorporation  of  the  Society  for  the  Propagation 
of  the  Gospel  and  the  mission  of  Dr.  Bray  stirred  up  t he- 
friends  of  the  Church  in  Albemarle,  and  gave  them  hopes 
of  seeing  the  Church  at  last  set  up  in  this  new  Colony. 
In  November,  1701,  the  Assembly  passed  an  Act  constitut- 
ing each  of  the  four  precincts  in  Albemarle,  i.e.  Chowan, 
Perquimans,  Pasquotank  and  Curratuck,  and  also  one 
precinct,  Painplico,  in  Bath  County,  parishes,  and  appoint- 
ing a  select  vestry  in  each.  The  vestry  were  empowered 
to  lay  a  tax  of  not  more  than  five  shillings  per  poll  to 
build  churches,  buy  glebes,  employ  ministers,  etc. ;  the 
minister's  salary  was  fixed  at  yC^o  t>cr  annum  in  commo- 
dities of  the  country,  equivalent  to  about  £\d  sterling. 
It  may  be  interesting  to  see  the  names  of  the  Chowan 
vestry  appointed  by  this  act  of  1701.  They  were  the  Hon. 
Henderson  Walker,  Col.  Thomas  Pollock,  William  Duck- 
enfield,  Esq.,  Mr.  Nicholas  Crisp,  Mr.  Edward  Smithwick, 
Mr.  John  Blount,  Mr.  Nathaniel- Chevin,  Mr.  William 
Banbury,  Col.  William  Wilkinson,  Capt.  Thomas  I/uten, 
and  Capt.  Thomas  Blount.  A  church  was  built  near  the 
site  of  the  present  town  of  Edenton,  and  another  was  be- 
gun in  Perquimans,  but  not  finished. 

I11  1704  the  Rev.  Tohn  Blair  was  sent  out  by  the  Society, 
upon  funds  supplied  by  Lord  Weymouth,  that  he  might 
see  what  could  be  done  for  the  Church.  _He  remained 
only  a  few  months,  and  returned  with  a  rather  discouraging 


13 

account  of  the  prospect.  He  reported  that  it  was  useless 
to  expect  the  people  to  provide  a  sufficient  support  for  the 
ministers  who  were  needed.  He  had  been  by  the  Governor 
appointed  to  take  charge  of  the  parish  of  Chowan,  but 
upon  leaving  for  England,  he  requested  the  vestry  to  ex- 
pend the  salary  due  him  in  charity  to  the  poor. 

In  1708  the  Rev.  William  Gordon  and  the  Rev.  Tames 
Adams  were  sent  out  by  the  Society  as  permanent  mission- 
aries,  with  an  annual  stipend  from  the  Society.  They 
were  put  in  charge  of  the  four  parishes  of  Albemarle; 
Chowan  and  Perquimans  being  assigned  to  Mr.  Gordon, 
and  Pasquotank  and  Curratuek  to  Mr.  Adams.  They 
were  both,  as  was  also  Mr.  Blair,  most  exemplary  men  and 
faithful  ministers.  Their  labors  are  sufficiently  described 
in  their  letters,  which  may  be  read  in  the  second  volume  of 
Dr.  Hawks's  History  of  North  Carolina.  Mr.  Gordon, 
however,  had  remained  but  a  few7  months,  when  he  felt 
obliged  to  return  to  England.  Mr.  Adams  labored  most 
faithfully  for  nearly  three  years,  and  died  towards  the  end 
of  the  year  of  17 10,  in  consequence  of  the  hardships  and 
trials  which  he  had  so  faithfully  borne. 

The  Act  of  1 70 1,  and  the  select  vestries  appointed  byjt, 
continued  until  the  Act  of  March  12th,  1710— 11,  which 
appointed  new  vestries  in  all  the  parishes,  and  which 
marks  a  new  period  in  our  ecclesiastical  affairs.  An  act 
had  been  passed  in  1708  somewhat  modifying  that  of  1701, 
but  not  making  any  essential  change,  nor  appointing  new 
vestries,  though  it  somewhat  enlarged  the  powers  of  the 
vestrv  in  employing  and  dismissing  a  minister.  But  there 
was  no  important  change  in  the  ecclesiastical  law  during 
the  period  from  1701  to  17 11.  It  is  necessary  to  bear  this 
in  mind.  In  1704  a  most  unjust  "Church  Act"  was 
passed  in  South  Carolina  by  the  contrivance  of  Sir 
Nathaniel  Johnston.  Though  it  professed  to  be  highly 
advantageous  to  the  Church,  it  was  really  a  political 
measure.      It  was  bitterly  opposed  by  the   only  clergyman 


H 

in  South  Carolina;  and  the  Society  for  the  Propagation  of 
the  Gospel  held  a  special  meeting  in  London  upon  hearing 
of  it,  and  resolved  to  send  no  more  missionaries  to  South 
Carolina  until  it  had  been  repealed,.  Upon  an  appeal  from 
South  Carolina,  the  House  of  Lords  declared  it  void,  as 
being  against  the  Charters;  and  proceedings  were  threaten- 
ed, and  even  begun,  for  declaring  that  the  Lords  Proprie- 
tors had  forfeited  their  franchise. 

Just  at  this  juncture  Henderson  Walker  died,  in  May, 
1704,  and  Sir  Nathaniel  Johnston  sent  from  South  Caro- 
lina Robert  Daniel,  a  politician  of  rather  doubtful  antece- 
dents, to  succeed  Walker  as  deputy  Governor.  It  hap- 
pened that  at  the  beginning  of  Gov.  Daniel's  administra- 
tion the  Act  of  Parliament,  passed  in  the  first  year  of 
Queen  Anne,  imposing  the  oaths  of  allegiance  to  the  new 
sovereign,  was  officially  transmitted  to  the  Governor  of 
North  Carolina.  Daniel  tendered  the  oaths  to  the  mem- 
bers of  the  Council  and  of  the  Assembly.  The  Quakers 
being  unable  to  swear  in  the  usual  form,  were  thereby  de- 
prived of  their  places,  and  at  once  began  a  most  bitter 
attack  upon  Daniel,  sending  an  agent  to  England  to 
represent  their  interests.  For  several  years  the  govern- 
ment of  Albemarle  was  a  scene  of  unceasing  contention 
and  disorder.  The  Quakers,  in  order  to  have  a  handle  by 
which  to  move  the  popular  mind,  took  up  their  old  oppo- 
sition to  the  Vestry  Act  of  1701,  and  in  Perquimans  and 
Pasquotank  created  much  feeling  against  the  Church.  On 
this  account  our  historians  have  confounded  our  troubles 
in  1704  with  those  of  the  same  date  in  South  Carolina; 
and  it  has  been  asserted,  and  repeated  from  one  to  another, 
that  Gov.  Daniel  had  been  sent  by  Sir  Nathaniel  Johnston 
for  the  purpose  of  effecting  in  the  northern  Colony  the 
ecclesiastical  arrangements  just  carried  out  in  the  southern; 
and  that  a  like  Act  for  excluding  dissenters  from  all  places 
of  trust  or  of  profit  in  the  Colony  was  passed  by  our  As- 
sembly of  1704.      Such  a  confounding  of  the  two  govern- 


*5 

ments  was  perhaps  natural  fifty  or  seventy-five  years  ago, 
but  is  inexcusable  now.  "The  Colonial  Records  of  North 
Carolina,"  published  by  Col.  Win.  L.  Saunders,  show  in- 
directly, but  still  sufficiently,  that  there  never  was  any 
such  legislation  in  North  Carolina;  and  there  is  contem- 
porary evidence  that  Gov.  Daniel  was  extremely  indifferent 
to  the  interests  of  the  Church,  The  troubles  of  1704  in 
North  Carolina  were  of  a  political  character.  They  arose 
in  the  first  place  out  of  the  exclusion  of  the  Quaker  mem- 
bers of  the  Council  and  of  the  Assembly,  by  the  imposition 
of  the  oaths  of  allegiance,  which  were  wholly  political  in 
their  origin  and  intention.  Being  thus  forced  into  opposi- 
tion to  the  administration,  the  Quakers  revived  their  old 
complaints  against  the  Vestry  Act  of  1701,  and  strove  to 
make  it  appear  that  they  were  fighting  the  battle  of  the 
people  against  ecclesiastical  oppression.  But  that  this  was 
not  the  real  point  at  issue  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  some 
of  the  strongest  and  most  zealous  Churchmen,  especially 
Edward  Moseley,  were  leaders  against  the  party  represented 
successively  by  Govs.  Daniel,  Glover,  and  Hyde.  In  truth 
the  history  of  this  period  is  exceedingly  obscure;  and  it  is 
probable  that  whatever  may  have  been  the  political  princi- 
ples or  interests  involved  in  its  struggles,  they  soon  became 
inextricably  mingled  with  local  and  personal  prejudices 
and  passions,  so  that  it  is  impossible  for  us  now  to  disen- 
tangle their  confused  threads. 

It  is  in  the  midst  of  these  sad  disturbances  that  we  get 
our  first  account  of  the  religious  conditions  of  the  people 
of  the  new  government.  The  letters  and  reports  of  the 
Revs.  Messrs.  Blair,  Gordon,  and  Adams  set  it  forth  with 
sufficient  fullness.  There  was  no  organized  religious  dis- 
sent in  the  Colony  except  the  Quakers,  who  were  confined 
to  the  two  precincts  of  Perquimans  and  Pasquotank.  Mr. 
Gordon  reckoned  them  as  one-tenth  of  the  whole  popula- 
tion; Mr.  Adams,  as  perhaps  a  seventh.  It  is  likely  that 
both  these  estimates  apply  only  to   Albemarle,  leaving  out 


[6 

Bath,  where  there  were  no  Quakers  to  speak  of.  A  few 
Presbyterians  were  in  Pasquotank,  bub-they  all  conformed 
to  the  Church  under  the  godly  ministry  of  Mr.  Adams. 
A  little  Colony  of  Huguenots  from  Virginia  had  recently 
settled  in  Bath  County;  these  also  conformed  willingly  to 
the  Church,  as  the  Huguenots  in  America  have  usually 
done.  The  rest  of  the  population  on  both  sides  of  Albe- 
marle Sound  and  along  the  Pamplico  were  nominally 
churchmen,  though,  as  has  already  been  said,  they  were 
for  the  most  part  ignorant  of  church  principles,  and  care- 
less of  religious  obligations.  Yet,  with  all  their  ignorance 
and  carelessness  there  was  never  a  time  from  1701  to  1776 
when  the  people  of  North  Carolina  did  not  persist  in  assert- 
ing through  their  legislative  assemblies  that  the  Church  of 
the  mother  country  was  the  Church  of  the  Province. 

It  may  be  said  in  reply,  that  this  was  not  the  Act  of  the 
people  of  North  Carolina,  but  only  of  a  few  individuals; 
that  the  Act  of  1701  was  due  to  Henderson  Walker,  the 
Act  of  1708  to  William  Glover;  and  that  the  subsequent 
legislation  of  the  same  character  was  due  to  the  exertions 
of  Swanu,  of  Pollock,  of  Moseley,  or  of  other  particular 
men.  But  these  men  were  North  Carolinians,  and  the 
very  best  of  North  Carolinians.  What  they  did  was  but 
the  expression  of  the  highest  and  best  feeling  and  thought 
of  the  Colony.  They  exerted  only  such  influence  as  such 
men  should  exert,  and  always  will  exert,  in  the  com- 
munities of  which  they  form  a  part.  Certainly  the  church- 
men of  that  day  compare  favorably  with  their  opponents, 
Carey,  Porter,  Lowe,  ct  id  omne  genus.  Why  did  such 
men  insist  upon  the  establishment  and  support  of  the 
Church  by  the  State  ?  We  can  see  now  that  their  system 
was  a  false  one,  and  that  in  the  end  the  supposed  state 
support  was  really  the  ruin  of  the  Church's  cause.  But 
to  them  the  Church  was  an  essential  part  of  a  well  ordered 
commonwealth.  In  the  midst  of  a  half-reclaimed  wilder- 
ness, and  under   innumerable    difficulties  and   perplexities 


57 

and  discouragements,  they  were  endeavoring  to  reproduce 
English  civilization  and  English  institutions  upon  the 
shores  of  America.  They  remembered  the  part  so  lately 
taken  by  the  Church  in  delivering  England  from  the 
tyranny  of  the  Stuarts  and  from  the  superstition  of  Rome; 
they  appreciated  her  wide  intellectual  and  spiritual  liberty; 
they  were  proud  of  her  great  scholars  and  divines.  They 
felt  that  the  Church  was  best  fitted  to  cultivate  and  to 
develop  the  rude  population  which  was  growing  up  in 
these  western  wilds,  and  at  that  same  time  to  keep  them 
close  to  the  best  memories  and  traditions  of  their  race. 
The  leading  men  in  North  Carolina  at  that  day  had  suf- 
ficient intelligence  and  taste  to  be  repelled  by  the  ignorance 
and  narrowness  which  to  a  very  great  extent  characterized 
the  dissenters  of  the  Colony;  while,  being  themselves 
active  politicians,  it  is  but  too  likely  that  they  lacked  that 
impartial  and  discriminating  spirit  and  that  generous 
religious  sympathy,  which  would  have  enabled  them  to 
recognize  under  its  forbidding  exterior  the  piety  and  godli- 
ness which  animated  many  an  ignorant  Quaker,  who 
seemed  to  them  only  a  contentious  opposer  of  truth  and 
common  sense.  While  the  leaders  must  be  supposed  to 
have  taken  some  such  view  of  the  situation,  the  mass  of 
the  people  accepted  the  establishment  of  the  Church  as 
being  part  of  the  necessary  machinery  of  civilization. 
They  were  not  forward  to  put  the  laws  in  operation,  but  it 
was  well  to  have  at  least  some  nominal  religion  for  their 
country. 

Thus  the  ecclesiastical  establishment  was  not  only  in 
accordance  with  the  fundamental  law  as  set  forth  on  the 
two  Charters;  it  also  expressed  the  will  of  the  people  of  the 
infant  commonwealth.  But  after  all,  nothing  could  have 
been  more  disadvantageous  to  the  Church  in  the  end. 
This  legal  establishment  exasperated  the  opposition  of  dis- 
senters, and  gave  them  a  handle  against  the  Church,  while 
the  pretended  support  was  altogether  illusory-      The  parish 


58 

revenues  provided  by  law  were  never  adequate  to  the  sup- 
port of  the  minister  or  to  the  building  of  churches. 
Private  liberality  always  had  to  maintain  the  one  and  to 
build  the  other.  For  example,  it  was  only  in  the  parish 
of  St.  Paul's,  Chowan,  that  the  services  of  the  Church 
seem  to  have  been  kept  up  with  anything  like  regularity 
during  the  first  part  of  the  last  century ;  and  from  the  best 
data  attainable  it  appears  that  the  whole  sum  paid  by  that 
parish  to  its  ministers  for  the  first  ten  years,  from  1701  to 
171 1,  was  only  about  fifty-five  pounds,  or  possibly  less,  in 
the  commodities  of  the  country,  equivalent  to  not  more 
than  twenty-five  pounds  sterling.  An  establishment 
which  practically  met  the  wants  of  nine-tenths,  or  at  least 
six-sevenths  of  the  people,  could  hardly  be  called  very  un- 
reasonable or  oppressive,  upon  the  accepted  principles  of 
those  days.  Prom  a  purely  selfish  point  of  view  the  money 
brought  into  the  Colony  by  the  missionaries  (during  this 
first  period  of  ten  years  it  must  have  been  between  ^300 
and  ^400  sterling),  the  advantage  of  their  character  and 
intelligence,  upon  the_new  settlements  and  the  ignoran t 
people,  the  benefit  to  the  young  of  the  schools  here  and 
there  established  by  their  efforts  and  maintained  asjgartfif 
their  work,  and  the  books  circulated  among  the  people, 
were  a  very  large  return  for  the  pitiful  sums  paid  ton  the 
missionaries  by  the  people. 

The  year  171 1  was  a  notable,  though  not  a  happy  one 
for  the  Province  of  North  Carolina.  The  new  Governor, 
Edward  Hyde,  had  arrived  towards  the  close  of  the  preced- 
ing year,  and  in  March  1 710— 11  the  Assembly  met. 
Having  for  years  suffered  from  the  uncertainties  of  the 
Proprietary  rule,  with  its  deputy  governors  holding  under 
the  Governor  of  the  South  Carolina,  the  Assembly,  iipon 
meeting  under  a  Governor  appointed  for  this  Province 
with  no  dependence  upon  the  Governor  or  government  to 
the  southward,  passed  an  act  ignoring  the  Charters,  and 
asserting  that  this  Province  was  annexed  to,  and  a  member 


59 

of,  the  Crown  of  England.  They  claimed  their  rights  as 
British  subjects,  and  asserted  that  the  constitution  and 
laws  of  England  were  the  law  of  the  Province,  so  far  as 
the  same  were  "compatible  with  our  way  of  living  and 
trade."  The  act  goes  on  to  provide  that  the  English 
laws  for  the  establishment  of  the  Church  and  for  the  tolera- 
tion of  Protestant  Dissenters  shall  be  in  force  in  North 
Carolina.  This  is  the  first  enactment  of  our  local  As- 
sembly ascertaining  and  declaring  the  position  of  dissenters 
in  the  Province.  The  Charters  had  merely  permitted  the 
Lords  Proprietors  to  grant  freedom  of  religion  under  such 
restrictions  as  they  might  see  fit.  The  Fundamental  Con- 
stitutions had  contained  specific  regulations  for  carrying 
this  permission  into  effect;  but  the  Fundamental  Constitu- 
tions had  themselves  never  been  put  into  effect  in  the 
Province  of  North  Carolina.  This  Act  of  17 11  therefore 
was  the  first  law  upon  the  subject.  It  put  dissenters  upon 
the  same  footing  as  dissenters  in  England,  and  settled  the 
question  for  the  rest  of  our  Provincial  period. 

The  law  referred  to— -commonly  known  as  the  Act  of 
Toleration— is  I.  William  and  Mary  St.  1.  c.  18.  It  is  en- 
titled An  i\ct  "for  exempting  their  majesties'  protestant 
subjects,  dissenting  from  the  Church  of  England,  from  the 
penalties  of  certain  laws. "  It  does  not  profess  to  be  an 
act  for  granting  freedom  of  religion  or  of  worship  in 
general,  but  only  to  certain  classes.  It  was  framed  ex- 
pressly to  exclude  Romanists  ^arrd  Unitarians.  But  as 
there  were  no  Papists  or  Unitarians  in  the  Province,  it 
practically  covered  the  case  of  all  dissenters  in  North 
Carolina,  and  it  had  been  drawn  for  the  very  purpose  of 
meeting  the  case  of  the  classes  to  which  they  belonged. 
The  terms  of  the  Act  were,  in  brief,  that  all  penalties  im- 
posed for  non-conformity  should  be  remitted  in  the  case 
of  Protestant  Dissenters  who  did  not  deny  the  doctrine  of 
the  Trinity,  upon  their  taking  the  oaths  of  allegiance  and 
the  test  oath  (or  affirming  to   the  same,    if  Quakers);   that 


6o 

their  places  of  worship  should  be  registered  in  the  Court  of 
the  Bishop,  the  Arch-Deacon,  or  the  County  Sessions;  and 
that  the  doors  of  their  places  of  meeting  should  be  unbolt- 
ed during  their  time  of  worship  or  other  assembly.  In 
the  case  of  their  ministers,  besides  the  oaths  before 
mentioned,  they  were  to  subscribe  the  Articles,  with  a 
reservation  as  to  those  which  related  to  ecclesiastical 
government  and  infant  baptism.  This  latter  provision 
was  aimed  against  Romanists  and  Unitarians,  as  it  was 
understood  that  the  doctrinal  statements  of  the  Articles  were 
in  accordance  with  the  belief  of  the  great  body  of  English 
Protestants. 

Thus  the  laws  affecting  dissenters  continued  until  the 
Revolution.  It  is  probable  that  in  very  few  cases  were 
dissenting  ministers  required  to  take  the  oaths  or  to  register 
the  places  of  religious  worship  in  the  County  Court,  though 
it  was  sometimes  done.  The  records  of  the  County  Court 
of  Edgecombe  contain  an  entry  which  illustrates  this  point, 
and  shows  the  practical  application  of  the  law.  During 
the  September  term  of  the  County  Court  for  the  year 
1761,  on  Thursday  of  Court,  before  Aquila  Sugg,  William 
Haywood,  Duncan  Eamon,  and  Joseph  Howell,  the  Justices 
holding  said  Court,  '  'Johnathan  Thomas,  a  Non-conforming 
Preacher,  produced  an  Ordination  Writing  signed  by 
George  Graham,  and  John  Moore,  the  Pastures  of  the 
Baptists  ordaining  him  to  [go]  forth  and  preach  the  Gospel 
according  to  the  Tenets  of  that  Church,  and  he  thereupon 
took  the  Oaths  of  Allegiance  and  subscribed  the  Test,  ap- 
pointed for  that  Purpose."  These  oaths  and  test  were 
also  required  of  all  civil  officers,  and  of  ministers  of  the 
Church  at  the  time  of  their  ordination.  So  far  as  they 
had  any  religious  significance  they  were  directed  against 
the  Roman  Church,  and  were  not  objected  to  by  Protestant 
Dissenters. 

Only  one  case  has  come  to  notice  where  it  has  been 
charged  that  there  was  any  attempt   to  make  use  of  this 


6i 

Act  of  Toleration  to  harass  the  dissenters  in  the  Province. 
In  1740— June  term— a  number  of  Baptists  applied  to  the 
County  Court  of  Craven  County  for  permission  to  build  a 
chapel.  At  the  same  time  affidavits  were  made  charging 
them  with  sundry  misdemeanors.  The  Court  took  their 
recognizances  to  appear  at  the  September  term,  and  post- 
poned their  petition  to  the  same  time.  At  that  term, 
nothing  appearing  against  them,  their  petition  was  granted, 
and  they  took  the  oaths,  subscribed  the  test,  and  assented 
to  the  XXXIX  Articles  with  certain  reservations.  It  does 
not  appear  that  any  wrong  was  done  to  any  one  in  these 
proceedings,  though  the  Court  certainly  exceeded  their 
powers,  when  they  undertook  to  examine  these  persons 
upon  the  Articles.  It  seems  likely  that  the  misdemeanors 
charged  against  the  petitioners  had  reference  only  to  some 
irregularity  in  connection  with  their  public  worship;  and 
the  Court,  being  convinced  of  this,  very  properly  passed 
over  the  matter,  and  granted  the  license  prayed  for  upon 
their  compliance  with  the  terms  of  the  Act  of  Toleration.  * 

After  this  digression  we  turn  again  to  the  year  1711. 
The  Colony  had  lately  been  considerably  increased  by 
the  settlements  made  by  the  French,  Swiss,  and  German 
Protestants  at  Newbern,  under  Baron  DeGraffenreid. 
These,  though  of  Calvinistic  faith,  signified  their  desire  to 
be  included  within  the  established  Church,  and  took  meas- 
ures to  have  ministers  ordained  for  them  by  the  Bishop  of 
London,  and  also  to  introduce  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer 
in  their  own  language. 

In  this  year,  or  at  the  end  of  the  preceding  year,  the  Rev. 
John  Urmstone  arrived  in  Albemarle  and  took  up  his 
residence  in  Chowan  precinct.^ 

*The  statement  sometimes  seen  as  a  wandering  paragraph  in  the  news- 
papers, that  these  persons,  or  some  others  in  a  like  case,  were  imprisoned 
or  otherwise  punished  because  they  were  Baptists,  is  absurd  upon  its 
face.  It  would  have  been  utterly  illegal,  and  would  have  subjected  the 
perpetrators  to  heavy  penalties  by  way  of  damages. 


62 

Though  Gov.  Hyde  met  with  some  opposition  at  first, 
it  soon  disappeared,  and  all  seemed,  to  promise  a  happy 
administration.  At  the  Assembly  in  March,  Good  Friday 
was  set  apart  as  a  public  fast  day,  and  Mr.  Urmstone 
preached  before  them,  and  administered  the  Holy  Com- 
munion. The  Vestry  Act  passed  was  probably  not  sub- 
stantially different  from  the  one  previously  in  force,  except 
that  it  left  out  the  provision  concerning  the  annual  hiring 
of  the  minister,  and  abridged  the  power  of  dismissal. 
But  on  the  other  hand  it  did  not  give  the  minister  a  seat  in 
the  vestry,  at  which  Urmstone  made  bitter  complaint. 
He  gives  a  most  unfavorable  account  of  a  meeting  of  the 
vestry  of  some  parish  which  he  does  not  name.  He  is  not 
worthy  of  credit  where  he  had  any  interest  involved,  and 
his  account  is  inconsistent  with  the  character  of  at  least 
some  of  the  members  of  the  vestry.  In  truth  Urmstone  is 
the  most  disgraceful  character  in  the  history  of  the  Church 
in  America.  He  was  scurrillous,  profane,  intemperate,  and 
mendacious.  He  did  more  harm  to  the  cause  of  the 
Church  in  North  Carolina  than  any  man  who  has  ever 
figured  in  our  history,  and  it  is  utterly  incredible  that  he 
should  have  been  allowed  for  ten  years  to  blast  the  pros- 
pects of  the  Church  in  the  Province  by  his  presence.  Yet 
so  it  was.  His  letters  are  a  tissue  of  abuse,  vulgarity,  and 
falsehood— -though  not  lacking  in  a  certain  coarse  humor, 
and  considerable  keenness  of  observation.  His  appearance 
upon  the  stage  of  action  is  one  of  the  events  which  mark 
and  which  darken  the  records  of  171 1. 

Before  Gov.  Hyde  had  fairly  gotten  into  the  adminis- 
tration of  his  government  after  the  flight  of  Carey,  came 
the  terrible  Indian  outbreak  and  massacre  of  September 
22nd.  We  can  hardly  realize  the  horror  and  hopelessness 
of  the  situation  when  from  the  Pamplico  to  the  new  settle- 
ments on  the  Neuse  all  seemed  swept  away  in  blood  in  one 
awful  night.  Reading  the  meagre  accounts  which  have 
come  down  to  us  it  seems  amazing  that  there  should  have 


*3 

been  anything  saved  from  the  wreck.  The  whole  country 
for  weeks  after  seems  to  have  been  utterly  unprotected,  and 
at  the  mercy  of  the  merciless  savages. 

For  a  year  or  two  it  would  have  been  impossible  for  the 
most  diligent  missionaries  to  have  accomplished  anything. 
The  Rev.  Giles  Rainsford,  sent  by  the  Society  for  the 
Propagation  of  the  Gospel,  arrived  in  Albemarle  in  May, 
17 1 2,  and  was  kindly  received  by  the  new  Governor,  and 
other  of  the  principal  inhabitants.  He  and  Mr.  Urmstone 
entered  into  an  agreement  whereby  Mr.  Rainsford  was  to 
supply  the  country  south  and  west  of  Albemarle  Sound 
and  the  Chowan  river,  while  Mr.  Urmstone  was  to  confine 
himself  to  the  region  north  and  east  of  the  same  waters. 
This  agreement,  however,  was  not  long  observed  by  Mr. 
Rainsford.  He  very  soon  removed  from  the  south  shore 
to  the  upper  part  of  Chowan,  and  thence,  after  a  few 
months  to  Virginia,  where  he  took  a  cure  from  Lady  Day 
to  Michaelmas  1713.  He  may  have  officiated  within  the 
bounds  of  Albemarle  after  this  time,  and  he  seems  to  have 
interested  himself  a  good  deal  in  the  remains  of  the 
Chowan  and  other  Indian  tribes  living  on  the  frontier 
between  the  two  governments,  but  he  returned  to  England 
in  1 7 16,  and  we  hear  no  more  of  him. 

Gov.  Eden  took  the  oath  of  office  in  May,  17 14.  The 
second  session  of  the  Assembly  after  the  beginning  of  his 
administration  put  forth  in  November,  1715,  a  revision  of 
the  Laws  of  the  Province,  and  among  others  a  new  and 
enlarged  Vestry  Act.  It  was  probably  only  a  re-enactment 
of  the  laws  on  the  same  subject  passed  in  1701,  1708,  and 
17 1 1,  in  its  essential  features,  but  it  increased  the  number 
of  parishes  from  five  to  nine,  and  allowed  the  vestry  to  fix 
the  salary  of  the  minister,  at  any  sum  not  less  than  fifty 
pounds  in  the  currency  of  the  Province.  An  act  was  also 
passed  for  the  suppression  of  vice  and  profaneness,  and  the 


64 

better  observance  of  the  Lords'    Day,  January   30th,    May 
29th,  and  September  22nd.  * 

The  Act  of  1715  continued  in  force,  new  parishes  being 
from  time  to  time  erected  by  the  Assembly,  until  1741. 
The  provision  thereby  made  for  the  Clergy  was  meagre 
enough,  though  liberal,  considering  the  condition  of  the 
country.  There  was,  however,  little  disposition  on  the 
part  of  the  vestries  to  put  the  law  into  operation;  and 
there  were  no  clergymen  to  do  the  service  required. 

In  October,  1718,  Commissary  Johnston  of  South  Caip- 
jina.  by  the  direction  of  the  Society  for  the  Propagation  of 
the  Gospel,  sent  the  Rev.  Ebenezer  Taylor  to  Albemarle. 
Mr.  Taylor  spent  his  first  year  upon  the  south-west  shore 
of  Chowan,  living  with  Mr.  Duckenfield,  and  taking  great 
pains  to  instruct  his  negro  and  Indian  slaves,  several  of 
whom  he  baptized.  He  was  stopped  in  this  good  work  by 
a  popular  prejudice,  which  shows  itself  again  and  again  in 
Colonial  days,  that  the  slave  who  was  baptized  was  thereby 
manumitted.  From  the  south  shore  of  Chowan  Mr.  Taylor 
removed  to  Perquimans,  and  thence  to  Bath  and  the 
country  to  the  south.  Mr.  Urmstone  says  that  he  was 
old  and  feeble,  and  very  unfit  for  the  work.  He  was 
certainly  diligent,  faithful,  and  devout.  He  rejected  the 
legal  provision  made  for  the  clergy  and  lived  upon  the 
voluntary  offerings  of  the  people,  as  did  others  of  our 
Colonial  clergy.  He  very  much  deplored  the  irreligion  of 
the  people,  and  the  carelessness  of  even  the  professed 
Christians.  They  had  been  so  long  unaccustomed  to  the 
Sacrament  of  the  Lord's  Supper,  that  he  could  not  prevail 
upon  them  to  come  to  it;  they  seemed  struck  with  fear 
that  it  would  be  to  their  condemnation.  Mr.  Taylor's  end 
was  a  sad  one.      Making  a  missionary  tour  from   Bath   to 

^January  30th,  and  May  29th,  in  the  English  Calendar  commemorate 
respectively  the  Execution  of  Charles  r.,  and  the  Restoration  of  Charles 
II.  September  22nd  was  by  our  Provincial  Assembly  appointed  to  be 
observed  as  a  day  of  fasting  and  prayer  in  commemoration  of  the  awful 
Indian  massacre  of  September  22nd,  1711. 


65 

Core  Sound  in  February,  J720,  lie  was  exposed  in  an  open 
boat  for  ten  days  in  very  severe  weather,  and  died  on  an 
island  near  the  mouth  of  Neuse  river.  He  was  buried  on 
Harbour  Island  by  men  who  were  there  hunting  hogs;  and 
there  were  very  grave  suspicions  of  foul  play,  since  it  was 
afterwards  discovered  that  they  had  taken  possession  of 
money  or  other  property  which  he  had  with  him  to  the 
amount  of  two  hundred  and  ninety  pounds.  This  was 
eventually  recovered  by  his  administrators. 

The  death  of  Mr.  Tavlor  left  Mr.  Urmstone  again  the 
sole  minister  in  the  Colony.  But  to  the  happiness  of  all 
parties  he  took  a  sudden  leave  in  March,  1721,  acquainting 
no  one  with  his  intentions  save  Col.  Moseley,  in  whose 
hands  he  left  his  plantation  and  other  interests  in  Albe- 
marle. We  are  so  thankful  to  be  rid  of  him  that  we  will 
not  pause  to  moralize  upon  his  character. 

Very  little  is  known  of  the  scattered  congregations  for 
some  years  following  Urmstone' s  departure.  JPhe  Rev. 
John  Newman  was  sent  out  by  the  Society  in  the  Autumn 
of  1 72 1  to  succeed  him  in  Chowan,  but  he  died  after  only 
six  months'  service,  leaving  a  widow  who  seems  to  have 
been  generously  treated  by  the  parish  and  by  the  people 
generally. 

In  the  stormy  times  of  Burrington  and  Everard,  two 
ministers,  Thomas  Bailey  and  John  Blacknall,  appear  for  a 
moment  in  the  midst  of  the  tumult,  and  come  in  for  a 
share  of  the  scurrillous  abuse  of  the  period,  which  some  of 
our  later  writers  have  repeated.  There  is,  however,  no  suf- 
ficient evidence  upon  which  to  base  an  estimate  of  their 
character  or  of  their  work.  * 

*The  Vestry  of  St.  Thomas'  Church,  Bath,  and  also  the  Vestry  of  Hyde 
precinct  in  1726  petitioned  the  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel 
in  favor  of  Mr.  Bailey,  and  testified  of  his  character  and  work  for  the 
three  years  which  he  spent  in  North  Carolina. 

As  to  Mr.  Blacknall's  having  married  a  white  man  to  a  negro  woman — 
or  a  mulatto  most  likely — the  fact  that  he  informed  against  himself  is  in 
his  favor.     He  had  probably  been  imposed  upon;  or  being  a  new  comer 


66 

Again,  in  1732,  the  Rev.  Bevil  Granville,  a  clergyman 
induced  by  Lord  Baltimore  to  leave  England  for  Maryland, 
happened  to  be  landed  in  North  Carolina,  and  was  persuad- 
ed to  spend  a  year  in  Chowan,  where  his  ministrations 
seem  to  have  been  very  acceptable  to  the  people. 

Upon  the  Cape  Fear  there  was  no  organized  parish  until 
1729.  But  the  year  previous  the  Rev.  John  Lapierre,  a 
French  Huguenot,  who  had  been  ordained  by  the  Bishop 
of  London  in  1708,  and  for  many  years  had  served  a 
congregation  of  his  own  people  in  South  Carolina,  called 
St.  Dennis'  Parish,  came  into  the  region  of  the  Cape  Fear 
river  upon  the  invitation  of  the  people,  and  with  the 
consent  of  Commissary  Garden.  For  a  while  he  was  sup- 
ported by  the  voluntary  gifts  of  the  people.  Afterwards 
the  newly  appointed  vestry  laid  a  parish  rate  for  his  sup- 
port. After  a  few  years  he  was  supplanted,  according  to 
his  own  account,  by  the  Rev.  Richard  Marsden,  who 
offered  his  services  gratuitously.  Mr.  Marsden  had  him- 
self been  a  minister  in  South  Carolina  from  1705  to  1709, 
but  had  now  become  an  inhabitant  of  New  Hanover,  and 
was  chiefly  engaged  in  planting  and  trading.  He  was 
anxious  to  be  appointed  to  this  field  by  the  Society,  but 
his  application  seems  not  to  have  been  favorably  received. 
He  officiated  also  for  a  while  in  Onslow.  At  this  same  time, 
1732,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Jones,  of  Virginia,  officiated  once  a 
month  in  Bertie. 

It  is  during  this  period  of  transition  from  Proprietary  to 
Royal  rule  that  we  first  find  another  body  of  dissenters 
besides  the  Quakers  rising  to  notice.  Paul  Palmer,  of 
Perquimans,  the  first  Baptist  preacher  in  North  Carolina, 
began  his  work  about  1727,  and  from  this  date  the  Baptists 
grew  stronger  and  stronger  in   the   Province.      There  was 

in  America,  he  may  have  been  ignorant  of  the  law.  Having  inadvertent- 
ly committed  a  breach  of  the  local  law,  he  could  only  come  forward  and 
submit  to  the  Court,  and  lessen  the  penalty  as  much  as  possible  by  claim- 
ing half  of  it.     Save  this  one  matter  there  is  not  a  word  against  him. 


67 

no  real  provision  made  for  the  spiritual  wants  of  the  peo- 
ple, and  so  they  gradually  forgot  their  faint  traditional 
attachment  to  the  Church,  and  went  to  such  religious 
meetings,  Baptist  or  Quaker,  as  they  could  find. 

One  sign  of  life  shows  itself  in  this  period  of  darkness. 
Mr.  John  Boyd,  a  graduate  of  the  Uniyersityof  Glasgow^ 
and  for  some  years  a  physician  in  Virginia,  went  from 
North  Carolina,  our  first  candidate  for  Holy  Orders,  in  17^2, 
and  after  haying  been  ordained  in  England,  returned,  and 
became  the  minister  in  the  North-West  Parish,  of  Bertie. 
There  were  no  dissenters  in  this  parish,  and  the  people 
seemed  eager  for  his  services.  He  reported  to  the  Society 
that  private  subscriptions  had  been  started  to  build  four 
chapels.  In  1737  Commissary  Garden  wrote  to  the  Bishop 
of  London  that  he  heard  bad  reports  of  Mr.  Boyd,  that  he 
was  intemperate  and  neglected  his  duties;  but  about  this 
time  he  seems  to  have  died,  still  one  of  the  Missionaries  of 
the  Society. 

Gov.  Burrington  was  succeeded  in  1734  by  Gabriel 
Johnston.  There  was  no  legislation  under  his  administra- 
tion affecting  the  general  interests  of  the  Church  until  the 
Act  of  17415  c.  xxiii. 

A  Vestry  Act  had  been  passed  in  1729,  but  it  is  doubt- 
ful whether  it  was  ever  operative.  We  are  unacquainted 
with  its  precise  character,  as  it  has  never  been  printed. 
It  seems  most  probable  that  up  to  1741  the  original  Vestry 
Act  of  1 77 1,  as  modified  by  the  Acts  of  1708,  1711,  and 
1 716,  remained  in  force.  None  of  these  acts  made  any 
provision  for  the  election  of  vestrymen  by  the  people. 
The  vestrymen  for  each  parish  were  named  in  those  acts, 
and  each  parish  vestry  was  a  close  corporation,  independ- 
ent and  irresponsible. 

The  Act  of  1 74 1  provided  that  the  Vestry  should  be 
chosen  on  Easter  Monday  of  every  alternate  year  beginning 
in  1742,  by  the  freeholders  of  the  parish  in  an  election  to 
be  held  by  the  Sherff.  Besides  the  five  parishes  created 
by  the  Act  of  1701,  the   four  added   in    17 15,    and  six  by 


special  acts  from  1715  to  1740,  the  act  of  1741  added  two 
new  ones,  making  the  whole  number  seventeen.  The  ves- 
trymen were  required  to  take  the  usual  oaths  and  to  sub- 
scribe a  declaration  that  they  would  not  oppose  the  liturgy 
of  the  Church.  Professed  dissenters  were,  as  in  former 
legislation,  allowed  to  decline  to  serve,  if  elected  upon  the 
vestry,  though  they  were  free  to  serve,  if  they  chose  to  do 
so.  In  short,  the  act  of  1741  is  substantially  the  same  as 
the  former  law,  except  as  regards  the  biennial  election  of 
the  vestry  by  the  freeholders  of  the  parish,  and  the  power 
now  given  the  vestry  to  withdraw  the  stipend  from  a  min- 
ister guilty  of  scandalous  immorality.  The  provision  of 
17 1 5,  allowing  the  vestry  to  fix  the  minister's  salary,  but 
setting  the  minimum  at  fifty  pounds  in  the  currency  of  the 
country,  was  continued  in  this  act  of  1741. 

The  marriage  act  passed  the  same  year,  1741,  c.  I.,  has 
been  quoted  as  if  it  conferred  upon  clergymen  of  the  Church 
the  privilege  of  performing  marriages,  which  it  witheld  from 
other  ministers;  but  a  careful  examination  of  our  legisla- 
tion will  show  that  the  Assembly  of  the  Province  never 
professed  to  give  to  the  clergy  such  a  right,  but  only  recog- 
nized a  right  which  rested  upon  prescription.  Our  earliest 
colonial  legislation  provided  that  the  civil  magistrate 
might  perform  this  office,  ?ipon  the  express  ground  of  neces- 
sity, because  there  ivere  no  clergy.  As  soon  as  ministers 
of  the  Church  came  into  the  Province  they  were  recognized 
as  having  this  right,  without  any  act  of  the  Assembly. 
The  act  of  17 15  distinctly  recognizes  this,  and  only  gives 
the  magistrates  the  right  to  join  persons  in  marriage  in 
cases  where  no  minister  is  to  be  had.  The  act  of  1741  c. 
I.  simply  brings  forward  this  feature  of  the  former  legisla- 
tion in  slightly  altered  phraseology,  and  declares  the  right 
to  be  in  the  clergy.  Furthermore,  in  1741  there  was  no 
organized  body  of  dissenters  in  the  Province,  and,  so  far  as 
we  know,  not  a  single  dissenting  minister  who  claimed  any 


69 

ministerial  authority  to  perform  the  marriage  ceremony,  or 
considered  that  a  part  of  his  pastoral  duties  or  functions.  * 

The  ministers  of  the  Church  in  the  Province  of  North 
Carolina  in  1741  were  the  Rev.  Mr.  Garzia  of  St.  Thomas's 
Church,  Bath;  the  Rev.  James  Moir,  who  had  lately  come 
from  South  Carolina  to  St.  James's  Church,  New  Hanover; 
the  Rev.  Richard  Marsden,  who  by  this  time  had  ceased 
officiating',  and  who  died  about  the  end  of  the  year  1742; 
and  the  Rev.  John  Lapierre  before  mentioned,  who,  being- 
ousted  from  New  Hanover  by  Mr.  Marsden' s  gratuitous 
ministrations,  seems  to  have  gone  to  Newbern  about  1735, 
and  to  have  remained  in  those  parts  until  his  death,  which 
did  not  occur,  as  we  have  reason  to  believe,  earlier  than 
the  year  1755.  It  may  be  mentioned  here,  though  this  is  an- 
ticipating the  proper  order  of  events,  that  there  was  at  this 
time  on  the  Cape  Fear,  where  he  had  lived  since  1729,  a 
certain  Christopher  Bevis,  in  Holy  Orders,  who  in  1748, 
after  Mr.  Moir's  departure,  for  a  moment  resumed  the  min- 
isterial character,  and  was  forced  by  the  necessities  of  the 
people  to  exercise  the  sacred  functions  which  ill  health  had 
caused  him  to  lay  aside  since  1728.  But  he  relapsed  as 
suddenly  into  oblivion  after  a  single  letter  to  the  Secretary 
of  the  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel. 

*It  seems  probable  that  all  through  the  Colonial  period  the  people  acted 
upon  the  Common  Law  principle  that  consent,  in  whatever  public  and 
formal  manner  expressed,  followed  by  cohabitation,  constituted  a  valid 
marriage;  and  though  the  law  might  prescribe  some  special  manner  of 
consent,  and  provide  a  means  of  its  certification,  and  the  preservation  of 
the  evidence  thereof,  it  would  not  deny  validity  to  such  marriages,  how- 
ever defective  the  contract  might  be  in  regard  to  legal  formalities.  We 
know  that  from  the  beginning  of  the  Quaker  meetings  they  married  after 
their  own  fashion,  calling  in  neither  minister  nor  magistrate.  And  the 
Presbyterian  marriages,  performed  by  their  own  ministers  before  the 
enabling  act  of  1766  c.  IX.,  and  in  direct  violation  of  the  law,  which  re- 
quired all  marriages  to  be  either  by  license  or  by  publication  of  banns, 
were  held  to  be  legal.  It  is  more  than  probable  that  the  law  upon  the 
subject  was  but  carelessly  observed  in  the  settlements  remote  from  court 
houses  and  clerks.  The  sanctity  of  marriage  depends  not  upon  the  mode 
of  solemnization,  but  arises  out  of  the  relation  itself. 


7o 

Mr.  Garzia  had  come  to  St.  Thomas's  Church,  Bath,  about 
1735.  He  was  a  faithful  and  devoted  minister.  He  died 
November  29th,  1744,  from  injuries  received  by  a  fall  from 
his  horse  in  returning  from  a  visit  to  a  sick  parishioner. 
He  left  a  wife  and  three  children  but  ill  provided  for,  who 
seem  to  have  been  recipients  of  the  bounty  of  the  Society, 
which  had  enrolled  him  upon  its  list  of  missionaries  sev- 
eral years  before  his  death.  It  was  probably  during-  his 
incumbency  that  St.  Thomas's  acquired  its  glebe  of  three 
hundred  acres  and  its  glebe  house,  the  only  one  ever  owned 
by  any  parish  during  the  provincial  period. 

Mr.  Moir  continued  in  New  Hanover,  first  at  St.  James's, 
Wilmington,  and  then  at  St.  Philip's,  Brunswick,  until 
about  the  beginning  of  1747,  when  he  removed  to  Edge- 
combe upon  the  invitation  of  the  inhabitants  of  that  large 
and  populous  parish,  at  that  time  perhaps  the  most  popu- 
lous in  the  Province. 

In  1743,  or  early  in  1744,  Clement  Hall,  Esq.,  of  Per- 
quimans, in  the  Commission  of  the  Peace,  with  a  reputa- 
tion for  "honour,  diligence  and  fidelity,"  who  had  been 
for  several  years  a  lay  reader  in  his  parish,  laid  before  the 
Bishop  of  London  testimonials  of  his  character,  and  applied 
for  Holy  Orders.  After  being  examined  he  was  ordained 
Deacon  and  Priest  in  1744,  and  returned  at  once  to 
North  Carolina  with  a  commission  from  the  Society  as 
their  itinerant  missionary.  He  found  his  patrimony 
much  wasted  from  want  of  proper  care  during  his  ab- 
sence. He  at  once  set  about  the  work  of  his  holy  call- 
ing with  the  same  "honour,  diligence  and  fidelity"  which 
had  marked  his  secular  life.  Two  Sundays  in  each  month 
he  officiated  in  St.  Paul  Church,  Edenton,  and  the  other 
Sundays  in  distant  parts  of  the  parish.  But  regularly  every 
year,  in  fulfilment  of  his  duty  to  the  wider  field,  he  took 
his  journeys  east  and  west.  From  the  old  settlements  of 
Perquimans  and  Pasquotank,  to  the  distant  frontiers  of 
Granville,  this  eager  messenger   made  his  annual  or  semi- 


71 

annual  tours,  baptizing  infants  and  adults,  catechising  the 
children,  churching'  women,  and  administering  the  Holy 
Communion  to  the  rude  folk,  who  learned  to  love  and 
trust  this  holy  man.  Everywhere  he  preached  to  such 
crowds  that  no  house  would  hold  them,  but  they  were 
forced  to  seek  the  shelter  of  the  groves,  where  the  birds 
were  the  choristers,  and  where,  in  the  pauses  between  their 
music,  they  "heard  the  bass  of  heaven's  deep  organ  blow." 
Upon  one  of  these  tours,  during  the  pleasant  September 
and  October  weather  of  the  year  1753,  he  reports  that  in 
thirty-five  days  he  traveled  536  miles,  officiated  in  23  con- 
gregations, baptized  467  white  and  21  black  children,  and 
2  white  women.  Such  zeal  as  this  bore  fruit  in  the  people 
upon  whom  it  was  poured  out.  Where  other  missionaries 
could  find  only  misery  and  discouragenent,  profane  people 
and  contentious  vestrymen,  he  found  happiness  and  hope, 
and  some  measure  of  response  to  his  own  goodness.  The 
work  upon  St.  Paul's  Church,  Eden  ton,  was  renewed  with 
vigor;  even  Corbin,  Earl  Granville's  unpopular  agent,  as- 
sured him  that  he  would  spare  no  pains  to  accomplish  the 
work;  and  he  lived  to  see  it  put  in  a  fair  way  of  being  com- 
pleted. In  1755  he  lost  his  house,  his  books,  and  pretty 
much  all  his  personal  property,  by  fire.  He  went  to  his 
reward  in  1759,  after  a  ministry  of  fifteen  years.  We  have 
no  exact  account  of  all  his  labors,  but  we  may  judge  the 
whole  from  his  account  of  a  part.  In  1752,  when  he  had 
run  half  his  course,  he  estimated  that  he  had  travelled 
14,000  miles,  preached  nearly  700  sermons,  and  baptized 
more  than  6,000  persons,  (including  several  hundred  negroes 
and  Indians).  He  reckoned  the  number  of  communicants 
in  his  circuit  at  400,  which,  considering  the  backwardness 
of  the  people  in  those  days  to  come  to  the  Holy  Commun- 
ion, was  a  wonderful  number.  In  Anderson's  "History 
of  the  Church  of  England  in  the  Colonies' '  the  account  of 
him  closes  with  these  words:  "In  weariness  and  painful- 
ness,  yet  with  faith  and  hope  unbroken,  he  persevered  unto 


72 

the  end;  and  *  *  *  worn  out  with  sickness  and  hard 
toil,  Clement  Hall  closed,  in  the  bosom  of  an  affectionate 
and  grateful  people,  a  career  of  pions  usefulness  which  has 
rarely,  if  ever,  been  equalled. ' ' 

The  Rev.  James  Moir,  in  Edgecombe,  had  also  a  labor- 
ious life,  and  for  a  while  he  travelled  and  preached  exten- 
sively. A  church  was  built  on.  Tar  River,  about  eight 
miles  above  the  present  town  of  Tafborough,  and  also  two 
chapels  in  other  parts  of  the  county,  one  of  which  was  prob- 
ably old  Couacanara  in  Halifax.  The  vestry  also  took 
orders  for  building  four  others.  In  1756  the  lower  part  of 
the  county  was  made  a  separate  parish,  called  St.  Mary's 
Parish,  which  became  Mr.  Moir's  charge.  The  upper  part 
remained  Edgecombe  Parish,  but  soon  after  became  a  sep- 
arate county  by  the  name  of  Halifax.  Mr.  Moir  is  an 
example  of  the  Establishment  idea  applied  to  the  facts 
of  American  colonial  life.  His  case  illustrates  the  whole 
story  of  the  failure  of  the  Church  in  the  Province.  He 
did  not  lack  abilities  or  worth,  but  he  was  all  the  time 
vexing  himself  and  railing  at  his  circumstances  because  he 
could  not  make  the  established  system  work.  Clement 
Hall,  born  in  the  new  country,  and  desirous  simply  of 
bringing  the  Gospel  to  bear  upon  the  people,  found  the 
system  no  insuperable  barrier,  because  he  was  not  working 
the  system.  James  Moir,  side  by  side  with  him,  accom- 
plished little  or  nothing,  because  he  was  fettered  by  that 
system  under  which  he  had  been  brought  up.  He  re- 
mained in  Edgecombe  until  the  summer  of  1762,  when  he 
removed  to  St.  George's  Parish,  Northampton  county, 
where  there  was  a  church,  and  also  three  chapels,  though  he 
continued  to  officiate  in  St.  Mary's  until  his  death  in  Feb- 
ruary, 1767.  He  was  one  of  the  Commissioners  appointed 
in  1760  to  lay  out  the  town  of  Tarborough,  and  perhaps  it 
is  to  him  that  we  owe  the  ecclesiastical  nomenclature  of 
the  streets— St.  George's,  St.  Patrick's,  St.  David's,  and 
St.  Joshua' 's.      He  also,  like  Mr.  Hall,  reports  a  wonderful 


73 

number  of  baptisms,  but  is  not  so  exact  in  his  statistics. 
In  one  report  he  excuses  himself  for  this  by  saying  that  he 
had  no  one  to  count  the  children  as  he  baptized  them,  and  so 
could  not  tell  the  exact  number. 

In  1753  there  came  into  the  Province  the  Rev.  Alexan- 
der Stewart,  a  missionary  of  the  Society  for  the  Propaga- 
tion of  the  Gospel  and  minister  of  St.  Thomas'  Church, 
Bath.  His  name  deserves  to  be  put  alongside  of  that  of 
Clement  Hall.  Until  the  spring  of  1771,  through  much 
sickness  and  fatigue,  and  amid  vexations  and  hardships, 
he  spoke  the  word  of  God  to  the  people  of  Beaufort,  Hyde 
and  Pitt  counties,  serving  thirteen  chapels  besides  his  par- 
ish church.  The  negroes  and  Indians  claimed  his  special 
care.  He  visited  the  remains  of  the  " Attamuskeets, " 
Hatteras  and  Roanoke  tribes  of  Indians  in  Hyde  county, 
and  endeavored  to  teach  them  the  principles  of  Christian- 
ity. As  agent  and  superintendent  for  North  Carolina  of 
the  society  called  "Dr.  Bray's  Associates,"  he  established 
a  school  for  their  benefit.  He  paid  a  school-mistress  to 
teach  Indian  boys  and  girls,  and  also  one  or  two  negro 
children,  to  read,  and  supplied  them  with  books.  The 
church  at  Bath,  though  begun  some  years  before,  was  not 
entirely  finished  until  1762.  He  suffered  much  from  sick- 
ness during  the  latter  part  of  his  life,  and  upon  one  occa- 
sion had  to  be  carried  from  Bath  to  Newbern  in  a  horse 
litter  to  consult  physicians  in  regard  to  a  dreadful  attack  of 
rheumatism  which  had  deprived  him  of  the  use  of  his 
limbs.  He  crowned  his  work  in  Bath  by  sending  forward 
two  notable  men  to  England  as  candidates  for  Holy  Orders, 
Mr.  Peter  Blinn  and  Mr.  Nathaniel  Blount.  The  latter 
did  not  go  over  until  the  second  year  after  Mr.  Stewart's 
death,  but  we  can  not  doubt  that  it  was  his  influence  which 
helped  to  prepare  so  worthy  a  successor  to  stand  in  his 
place  when  he  was  gone,  and  to  hand  down,  almost  to  our 
day,  his  testimony  to  the  truth. 

The  same  year  which  brought  Mr.  Stewart  to  Bath  gave 


74 

the  Rev.  James  Reed  to  Christ  Church,  Newbern.  He 
came  over  from  England  with  his  family  in  response  to  an 
offer  and  appeal  sent  to  England  by  "the  vestry  of  Craven 
Parish.  The  special  agreement  between  him  and  his  ves- 
try was  confirmed  by  Act  of  the  Assembly  1754  c.  XVI. 
In  1758  he  was  made  one  of  the  missionaries  of  the  Society. 
He  well  deserved  the  appointment,  for  besides  his  church 
in  Newbern  he  served  nine  chapels  in  Craven  and  Carteret 
Counties.  His  long  and  faithful  services  can  not  be  ade- 
quately presented  in  a  summary.  He  acted  as  Chaplain  to 
the  Assembly;  he  built  and  carried  through  to  such  meas- 
ure of  success  as  it  attained,  the  Newbern  Academy.  Mr. 
Reed  saw  the  troubles  of  1776  coming  on,  but  he  stood  to 
his  royalist  principles,  and  he  disappears  from  our  North 
Carolina  annals  praying  heartily  for  King  George,  while 
the  drums  of  marching  soldiers  drown  his  voice  and  the 
clouds  of  war  wrap  him  from  our  view.  He  left  behind 
him  the  memory  of  a  man  of  honor  and  a  faithful  minister 
of  God.  The  patriotic  churchmen  of  Newbern,  Nash,  and 
Speight  and  Leech,  thought  not  the  worse  of  him  for 
bravely  siding  with  the  country  of  his  birth. 

The  Rev.  John  McDowell  in  1754  became  minister  at 
Wilmington,  by  that  time  grown  to  be  the  largest  town  in 
in  the  Province.  He  was  put  into  orders  upon  Gov.  Dobbs's 
recommendation,  and  spent  the  whole  of  his  ministry  in 
New  Hanover,  at  St.  James', s  Wilmington,  and  St.  Phil- 
ip's, Brunswick.  In  1760  he  was  made  a  missionary  of 
the  Society.  Handsome  churches  had  some  years  before 
this  been  begun  both  in  Wilmington  and  in  Brunswick, 
though  the  latter  was  not  finished  until  1768,  while  the 
former  was  still  longer  in  building.  Mr.  McDowell  died 
in  1763,  and  was  succeeded  by  the  Rev.  Mr.  Barnett  in 
1765.  The  Rev.  John  Mills  became  the  minister  in  1769, 
and  in  1774  the  Rev.  Nicholas  Christian  was  in  charge; 
we  know  very  little  of  either  of  them. 

In  Edenton  the  Rev.  Clement   Hall    was   succeeded    in 


75 

1759)  immediately  upon  his  death,  by  the  Rev.  Daniel 
Earl.  The  large  and  handsome  parish  church,  begun  by 
private  subscription  before  the  year  1740,  towards  which 
the  Lords  Proprietors  had  given  ^200,  was  probably  so 
far  finished  in  Mr.  Hall's  time  as  to  be  occupied,  but  was 
not  completed  until  many  years  after.  Mr.  Earl  frequently 
speaks  of  its  being  in  a  dilapidated  condition.  He  con- 
fined his  ministrations  chiefly  to  St.  Paul's  Church,  and 
continued  in  charge  for  the  greater  part,  if  not  the  whole, 
df  the  Revolution. 

The  Rev.  Thomas  Burges  became  the  minister  of  Edge- 
combe Parish,  Halifax  county,  in  October,  1759.  His 
special  agreements  made  with  the  vestry  of  that  parish 
were  confirmed  by  two  private  acts  of  the  Provincial  As- 
sembly, the  first  by  the  Act  of  1760  c.  VII. ;  the  second  by 
Act  of  J  764,  2d  Sess. ,  c.  XVII.  He  continued  rector  of 
this  parish  till  the  Revolution,  or  thereabouts.  It  may  be 
mentioned  that  when  the  town  of  Tarborough  was  laid  off 
in  1760,  and  the  lots  sold,  parson  Burges  bought  the  lot 
upon  which  Calvary  Church  was  erected  in  1834.  When 
the  church  came  to  be  built  his  grandson,  Thomas  Burges, 
Esq.,  conveyed  the  lot  to  the  vestry  for  that  purpose. 

With  the  administration  of  Gov.  Tryon  a  new  era  of 
activity  in  ecclesiastical  affairs  begins.  Gabriel  Johnston 
and  Arthur  Dobbs  were  both  zealous  churchmen,  but  Try- 
on's  activity  in  seeking  to  advance  the  cause  of  the  Church 
and  of  religion  in  the  Province,  was  quite  beyond  anything 
which  had  been  seen  before.  Yet  it  was  not  the  zeal  of  a 
mere  sectarian  bigotry.  All  our  historians  have  admitted 
that  he  met  the  dissenting  interests  of  the  country  with  a 
generous  appreciation  and  tolerance  which  to  a  very  great 
extent  won  their  good  will.  Upon  the  outbreak  of  the 
first  Regulation  troubles  in  1768  the  Presbyterian  ministers 
united  in  an  address  to  him,  in  which  they  declared  that 
they  had  the  highest  sense  of  the  justice  and  benevolence 
of  his  administration,  under  which  they  say  that  they  en- 


76 

joyed  all  the  blessings  of  civil  and  religions  liberty,  or 
words  to  that  effect.  They  also  put^  forth  a  pastoral  let- 
ter to  their  people,  quite  as  ardent  in  its  expressions  of 
loyalty  to  King  George  as  was  parson  Micklejohn's  sermon 
before  the  troops  at  Hillsboro'  upon  the  text,  '  'The  powers 
that  be  are  ordained  of  God."  Gov.  Try  on,  on  his  part, 
always  speaks  of  the  Presbyterians,  and  also  of  the  Quakers, 
with  the  highest  respect.  As  a  civil  administrator,  bred  in 
the  school  of  military  discipline,  he  had  less  respect  for 
the  ruder  and  more  extravagant  forms  of  religions  enthu- 
siasm—the "New  Lights"  and  the  "Separatists" — who 
were  becoming  so  numerous  in  some  quarters.  But  no 
complaint  has  come  down  to  us  from  any  religious  body 
against  his  ecclesiastical  administration.  His  zeal  for  the 
Church,  and  his  great  interest  in  the  business  of  the  Soci- 
ety for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel,  probably  had  their 
origin  in  some  close  relationship  to  that  work.  In  1730  the 
treasurer  of  the  Society  was  "William  Try  on,  Merchant, 
Lime  Street,  London;"  a  few  years  later  "William  and 
Thomas  Tryon"  shared  the  office.  It  is  probable  that 
Gov.  Tryon  was  a  son  of  one  of  these,  and  that  his  boyhood 
had  been  nurtured  in  close  association  with  the  venerable 
Missionary  Society  of  the  Church  of  England.  Certain  it 
is  that  he  zealously  promoted  the  interests  of  the  Church  in 
North  Carolina,  and  all  her  ministers  found  in  his  house 
hospitality  and  hearty  sympathy,  and  in  him  a  ready  and 
indefatigable  friend. 

The  exact  state  of  the  ecclesiastical  laws  during  Dobbs's 
administration  is  not  very  clear,  owing  to  the  repeal  of  some 
laws  by  royal  proclamation,  and  the  consequent  failure  of 
other  laws  dependent  upon  them.  As  well  as  I  can  under- 
stand, it  was  about  as  follows:  A  number  of  acts  were 
passed  from  1754  to  1764,  but  from  one  cause  or  another 
they  were  repealed  by  the  Assembly  or  disallowed  by  the 
King  in  Council,  until  in  1762  the  Province  was  somehow 
left  without  any  legal  vestries  whatever,  and  the  ministers 


77 

had  to  manage  as  they  could.  This  was  remedied,  how- 
ever, by  the  passage  of  the  act  of  1764  c.  II.,  making 
elaborate  provision  for  the  election  of  vestrymen  and  the 
support  of  the  ministers,  etc. ,  which  was  to  continue  only 
five  years,  but  which,  with  some  slight  amendments,  re- 
mained the  law  of  the  land  until  the  close  of  the  royal  gov- 
ernment. This  law  raised  the  minister's  salary  to  ^133 
per  annnm,  and  provided  better  security  for  his  getting  it. 
It  still,  however,  left  the  election  of  vestrymen  to  the  free- 
holders of  the  parish,  and  thereby  winked  at  the  disregard 
of  the  law  in  those  parishes  where  the  inhabitants  did  not 
desire  to  have  the  services  of  the  Church.  But  the  vicious 
system  of  a  legal  establishment  was  bearing  its  fruit,  and 
we  see  a  sign  of  it,  in  this  act  of  1764,  in  the  provision 
that  any  person  elected  a  vestryman  who  should  refuse  to 
qualify,  if  a  known  dissenter,  should  be  fined  three  pounds. 
Heretofore,  dissenters  had  been  excused  from  serving;  now 
they  alone  are  forced  by  a  penalty  to  serve  if  elected.  This 
points  to  the  fact  that  the  law  had  been  defeated  by  dis- 
senters taking  advantage  of  the  former  indulgence  of  the 
law,  and  procuring  themselves  to  be  elected  vestrymen,  in 
order  that  by  refusing  to  serve  they  might  render  the  law 
ineffectual. 

So  far  as  we  know  only  one  contest  took  place  under 
these  acts  between  churchmen  and  dissenters  in  regard  to 
the  enforcement  of  the  law.  It  happened  most  fortunately 
for  peace  and  harmony  that  each  section  of  the  Province 
had  been  settled  by  a  homogeneous  population.  In  the 
northern  counties,  from  Orange  to  the  seacoast,  and  gen- 
erally throughout  the  seaboard,  the  people  were  almost 
wholly  English,  and  professed  an  allegiance  to  the  Church. 
West  of  these  counties  the  Presbyterians  had  their  settle- 
ments, and  the  Lutherans  and  Dutch  Reformed  theirs,  but 
each  in  separate  and  distinct  communities.  The  upper 
Cape  Fear  country  was  wholly  Presbyterian.  In  the  dis- 
senting communities  vestrymen  were  elected  and  performed 


78 

their  civil  duties,  but  as  they  wanted  no  Episcopal  clergy 
or  services  they  ignored  their  ecclesiastical  functions.  The 
Moravians,  upon  their  own  request,  were  organized  into  a 
separate  parish  called  Dobbs  Parish,  and  transacted  their 
own  parish  business  by  themselves.  This  order  of  things  was 
usually  respected  by  the  Governor,  the  Assembly,  and  the 
Episcopal  clergy.  When  in  1766  the  Rev.  Andrew  Mor- 
ton was  sent  out  from  England  by  the  Society  for  the  Pro- 
pagation of  the  Gospel  to  take  charge  of  St.  Martin's 
Parish,  Mecklenburg  County,  he  wrote  back  to  the  Society 
that  upon  inquiry  he  learned  that  the  inhabitants  of  that 
parish  were  all  Covenanters  and  Seceders,  and  therefore, 
with  the  consent  of  Gov.  Tryon,  he  had  agreed  to  take 
charge  of  St.  George's  Parish  in  Bertie. 

But  in  Rowan,  where  there  were  many  Presbyterians, 
there  was  also  a  strong  colony  of  churchmen,  men  of  Eng- 
lish blood,  who  had  come  from  Maryland  and  Pennsylvania. 
They  desired  a  minister,  and  in  1 769,  or  at  the  very  begin- 
ning of  1770,  the  Rev.  Theodoras  Swaine  Drage,  who  had 
been  licensed  for  North  Carolina  by  the  Bishop  of  London 
the  29th  of  the  preceding  May,  came  to  Salisbury  and  un- 
dertook to  have  a  vestry  elected.  On  Easter  Monday  a 
vestry  was  elected,  but  it  was  composed  largely  of  Presby- 
terian elders,  and  all  its  members  were  pledged  not  to 
enforce  the  laws.  Mr.  Drage,  in  his  letters  to  Gov.  Try- 
on,  asserted  that  his  party  were  in  a  numerical  majority, 
and,  as  the  Lutherans  seem  to  have  acted  with  him,  he  was 
possibly  correct  in  this  estimate.  But  he  says  that  most 
of  his  people  were  new-comers  into  the  Province,  and  that 
on  account  of  the  troubles  in  the  Earl  of  Granville's  land 
office,  they  had  been  unable  to  get  patents  for  their  land, 
and  so  were  not  technically  freeholders.  Mr.  Drage  under- 
took to  argue  the  question  with  the  Presbyterian  elders, 
alleging  that  as  they  had  chosen  to  come  into  the  Province 
knowing  its  laws,  they  ought  to  obey  those  laws  until  they 
could  procure  their  repeal.      Failing  of  converting  them,  he 


79 

appealed  to  the  Governor,  and  then  got  the  Governor  to 
lay  the  case  before  the  General  x\ssembly;  they  declined 
to  interfere,  and  Mr.  Drage  seems  to  have  left  Salisbury 
after  a  year  or  two. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  the  legislation  of  the  Pro- 
vince up  to  this  time,  while  recognizing  the  right  of  the 
clergy  of  the  Church  to  perform  the  marriage  ceremony, 
had  not  authorized  its  performance  by  any  other  ministers. 
At  the  time  of  this  legislation  this  was  no  hardship,  because 
there  were  no  other  ministers  in  the  Colony  who  considered 
this  a  part  of  their  ministerial  functions;  but  when  the 
Presbyterian  settlements  were  made  in  the  up-country  and 
along  the  Cape  Fear,  the  Presbyterian  ministers  continued 
to  marry  their  people  as  they  had  been  accustomed  to  do. 
One  of  the  acts  passed  in  Gov.  Tryon's  administration,  and 
generally  believed  to  have  passed  by  his  procurement,  was 
an  act  (1766  c.  IX.)  to  validate  these  marriages  and  to 
make  it  lawful  thereafter  for  dissenting  or  Presbyterian 
ministers  to  perform  this  function.  It  is  to  be  noted,  how- 
ever, that  the  preamble  of  the  act  recites  that  the  validity 
of  these  marriages  had  been  called  in  question,  (though  in 
law  they  were  unquestionably  valid),  not  because  they  had 
been  performed  by  Presbyterian  clergymen.  There  is  not 
a  particle  of  evidence  that  any  one  attacked  them  on  this 
ground;  their  validity  was  questioned  because  the  Presby- 
terian ministers,  not  being  named  in  the  Act  of  1741,  had 
considered  themselves  at  liberty  to  violate  the  terms  of  the 
law  in  other  respects,  and  had  been  in  the  habit  of  per- 
forming marriages  without  publication  of  the  banns  or  the 
procuring  of  a  license,  as  was  required  of  all  persons.  It 
seems  an  ungracious  provision  of  this  law,  meant  to  be  an 
act  of  courtesy  as  well  as  of  justice,  to  the  growing  settle- 
ments along  the  Yadkin  and  the  Catawba,  that  it  provided 
that  the  Episcopal  minister  in  the  parish  where  the  mar- 
riage was  performed  should  be  entitled  to  the  fees,  if  he  had 
not  refused  to  perform  the  service.     This,  however,  was  of 


8o 

less  consequence,  as  there  was  not  a  single  minister  in  any 
parish  in  the  Province  where  a  Presbyterian  minister  re- 
sided. And  when,  a  few  years  afterwards,  the  two  bodies 
did  become  mingled  together  in  a  few  localities,  there  is  no 
reason  to  think  that  any  minister  of  the  Church  ever  so 
far  forgot  Christian  courtesy  as  to  desire  to  take  advantage 
of  this  provision.*  Indeed,  it  may  be  said  that  in  no  one 
of  the  thirteen  Colonies  was  there  less  ill  feeling  between 
religious  denominations.  Whatever  may  have  been  the 
theory  of  the  law,  or  the  provisions  of  our  Colonial  stat- 
utes, Christian  moderation  and  charity  so  controlled  their 
application  that  they  never  became  a  source  of  irritation 
or  of  popular  discontent. 

The  effect  of  Gov.  Tryon's  interest  in  the  Church,  and 
of  his  constant  correspondence  with  the  Bishop  of  Lon- 
don and  the  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel, 
was  soon  apparent.  During  the  seven  years  of  his  admin- 
istration the  number  of  clergy  in  the  Province  rose  from 
five  to  eighteen.  These  were  distributed  in  different  parts 
of  the  Province  from  Salisbury  and  Hillsboro'  to  the  sea- 
coast,  some  supported  solely  by  their  stipend  from  the 
Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel  and  the  volun- 
tary offerings  of  the  people,  and  devoting  themselves  to 
gathering  congregations  in  new  parts  of  the  field;  others 
settled  over  established  congregations,  and  busy  trying  to 
lay  foundations  of  educational  and  other  institutions. 

It  is  hardly  fair  to  find  fault  with  men  of  those  days  for  not 

*This  act  of  1766  c.  IX.,  speaks  in  the  preamble  of  "Presbyterian  or 
Dissenting"  ministers,  evidently  using  the  words  as  synonymous,  and  not 
as  representing  two  different  classes;  and  in  the  enacting  clauses  it  uses 
the  word  "Presbyterian"  alone.  This  was  probably  because  at  that  time 
the  Presbyterian  ministers  were  the  only  dissenting  ministers  in  the  Pro- 
vince who  considered  the  performance  of  the  marriage  ceremony  for  their 
people  part  of  their  pastoral  duty.  It  has  sometimes  been  stated  that 
this  act  of  1766  c.  IX.  was  repealed  by  royal  proclamation,  but  there  is 
no  note  of  such  repeal  in  our  statute  books.  It  is  brought  forward  in 
every  revisal  and  was  the  law  of  the  land  for  the  rest  of  our  colonial 
period, 


seeing  with  our  eyes,  but  it  seems  strange  to  us  that  the 
churchmen  of  the  Province  of  North  Carolina  should  not 
have  recognized  how  impossible  it  was  to  build  up  the 
Church  upon  the  English  parochial  system.  The  support 
provided  by  the  most  liberal  legislation  was  totally  insuffi- 
cient for  the  maintenance  of  the  clergy  and  the  building  up 
of  church  institutions.  All  sorts  of  shifts  had  to  be  re- , 
sorted  to  by  the  vestries,  even  to  finishing  their  churches 
by  selling  the  fee-simple  of  the  pews,  and  by  lotteries.  It 
is  to  the  credit  of  the  people  of  Bdenton  that  they  pro- 
tested against  selling  the  pews  in  St.  Paul's,  and  petitioned 
the  Assembly  to  finish  it  by  a  tax  upon  the  parish,  so  that 
all,  paying  equally,  might  have  equal  rights  in  their  house 
of  worship.  But  while  the  laws  were  inadequate  to  the 
support  of  the  Church,  they  exasperated  such  opposition 
as  there  might  be  to  the  Church  in  the  several  parishes 
where  its  worship  was  maintained,  and  they  kept  the  peo- 
ple from  realizing  and  performing  their  duty. 

In  another  way  the  system  was  unnatural  and  pernicious. 
In  theory  the  right  of  presentation  to  a  parish  was  clearly 
in  the  King  and  his  representative,  the  Governor.  The 
Charters  of  Charles  II.,  under  which  the  people  or  their 
Assemblies  were  continually  asserting  their  rights,  had  ex- 
pressly provided  that  the  right  of  presentation  to  all 
churches,  chapels  and  oratories  should  be  in  the  proprie- 
tors, and  after  1728  the  King  stood  in  place  of  the  propri- 
etors; this  right  was  also  vested  in  the  Crown  by  act  of 
the  Assembly.  But  Try  on' s  exercise  of  this  right  of  pre- 
sentation provoked  much  opposition,  and  occasioned  con- 
troversies between  himself  and  several  of  the  parishes,  even 
where  there  was  a  perfect  willingness  to  receive  the  minis- 
ter whom  he  proposed  to  induct. 

But  for  a  time  the  affairs  of  the  Church  seemed  to  pros- 
per, and  all  testimonies  agree  that  it  yet  retained,  and 
continued  to  retain  down  to  the  Revolution,  a  majority  of 
the  population  of  the  Province.      In    large    and    populous 


82 

sections  there  were  no  dissenters  at  all,  and  where  they 
were  most  numerous  in  the  English  settlements  (as  distin- 
guished from  the  Scotch  and  Scotch-Irish,)  many  of  them 
declared  that  they  were  dissenters  only  because  they  had 
no  opportunity  of  enjoying  the  ministrations  of  the  Church. 
At  the  beginning  of  the  Revolution  there  were  only  two 
Baptist  Associations  in  North  Carolina.  The  Methodists 
were  becoming  numerous,  and  had  local  preachers  here  and 
there,  but  as  a  body  they  were  still  loyal  to  the  Church. 
When  Mr.  Whitefield  preached  at  Newbern  he  publicly 
proclaimed  that  he  was  a  faithful  minister  and  son  of  the 
Church  of  England,  and  he  found  fault  with  Mr.  Reed, 
the  minister  at  Newbern,  because  he  gave  the  name  of 
Methodists  to  an  extravagant  sect  in  that  part  of  the  coun- 
try who  had  separated  from  the  Church. 

One  of  the  best  remembered  of  the  clergy  who  came  into 
the  Province  during  Gov.  Tryon's  administration,  is  the 
Rev.  George  Micklejohn,  S.  T.  D. ,  minister  of  St.  Mat- 
thew's parish,  Orange  county,  from  1766  to  1776.  He 
preached  loyalty  to  the  Regulators  in  1768,*  and  so  when, 
following  his  teaching,  the  Regulators  of  Alamance,  (which 
was  then  in  Orange  county  and  a  part  of  his  parish,) 
marched  to  join  McDonald  at  Cross  Creek,  he  seems  to 
have  gone  with  them,  probably  as  their  chaplain,  and  to 
have  been  captured  with  the  other  Tories,  Highlanders  and 

*When  Gov.  Tryon  and  his  militia  forces,  raised  to  put  down  the  first 
"Regulation,"  in  1768,  were  encamped  at  Hillsboro,  Sunday,  September 
25th,  Rev.  George  Micklejohn,  rector  of  St.  Matthew's,  Hillsboro,  and 
Rev.  Henry  Patillo,  an  eminent  Presbyterian  minister  of  Granville  Coun- 
ty, were  appointed  to  preach  to  the  troops.  Mr.  Micklejohn  took  for 
his  text:  "The  powers  that  be  are  ordained  of  God,"  etc.,  Romans  xiii. : 
1-2.  He  was  so  well  pleased  with  his  effort  that  he  had  it  printed  by 
James  Davis,  of  Newbern,  and  presented  one  hundred  copies  to  the  next 
Assembly.  What  was  the  character  of  Mr.  Pattillo's  discourse  we  know 
not.  He  did  not  include  that  sermon  among  those  published  at  Wilming- 
ton in  1788.  But  we  know  that  he  was  quite  as  stout  a  supporter  of 
government  in  1768  as  was  Micklejohn  himself,  and  in  the  pastoral  letter 
put  out  by  him  and  his  brother  ministers,  they  bring  to  bear  upon  the 
Regulators  the  same  text,  Romans  xiii.:  1-2. 


83 

Regulators,  at  Moore's  Creeek  in  February  1776.  The  Pro- 
vincial Congress  at  Halifax  paroled  him  the  3d  of  May 
following,  but  did  not  allow  him  to  return  to  Hillsboro  lest 
he  should  corrupt  the  patriotism  of  his  parishioners.  He 
was  required  to  go  to  Perquimans  County,  and  to  remain 
there  on  the  south  side  of  the  river.  We  shall  hear  of  him 
again  in  the  story  of  the  Church  in  North  Carolina. 

Another  well  remembered  name  is  Charles  Cupples,  min- 
ister of  St.  John's  parish,  Bute  county,  (now  Warren  and 
Franklin),  from  1766  until  some  time  during  or  after  the 
Revolution.  Though  an  Englishman,  he  took  the  Amer- 
ican side  in  the  contest.  While  his  name  and  character 
are  well  remembered  we  know  little  of  the  particulars  of 
his  life.  He  was  specially  interested  in  the  welfare  of  the 
slaves,  and  endeavored  to  impress  upon  their  owners  the 
propriety  of  coming  up  with  them  to  baptism,  and  of  acting 
as  god-fathers  and  god-mothers  for  these  poor  people  to 
whom  they  owed  such  sacred  duties. 

We  begin  now  to  find  a  number  of  young  men  coming 
forward  among  our  people,  and  offering  themselves  for  the 
work  of  the  ministry.  We  have  no  complete  list,  but  a 
number  of  names  appear  incidentally  in  the  records  of 
those  times. 

First  we  have  James  Macartney.  After  having  been  an 
assistant  teacher  in  the  Newbern  Academy,  he  went  to 
England  for  Holy  Orders  in  May,  1768,  and  the  following 
July  he  was  ordained.  Gov.  Tryon  placed  him  in  Gran- 
ville Parish,  where  he  had  Richard  Henderson  for  one  of 
his  vestrymen,  and  the  Presbyterian  divine,  Henry  Pattillo, 
for  one  of  his  neighbors.  He  says  he  found  many  Presby- 
terians in  his  parish,  and  he  seems  to  have  lived  in  peace 
and  charity  with  them. 

In  the  same  year  Henry  John  Burges  and  Francis  John- 
ston went  over,  recommended  by  parson  Burges,  the  father 
of  the  former,  and  Gov.  Tryon;  the  next  year  Edward 
Jones,    recommended    by    parson    Micklejohn,    and    Peter 


84 

Blinn,  by  parson  Stewart,  of  Bath.  Gov.  Tryon  joins  Mr. 
Stewart  in  giving  Mr.  Blinn  the  highest  testimonials. 
There  were  others,  also,  who  went  from  this  Province  to 
seek  ordination  to  the  same  holy  office.  Their  names  may 
be  included  in  the  clergy  lists  of  this  period,  but  the  scanty 
records  of  that  day  do  not  enable  us  to  identify  them.  To 
anticipate  a  year  or  two,  so  as  to  close  this  subject,  it  may 
be  added  that  Nathaniel  Blount,  another  member  of  Mr. 
Stewart's  parish  in  Beaufort  county,  and  Charles  Pettigrew, 
from  St.  Paul's  Church,  Edenton,  were  ordained  shortly 
after  this  time,  and  returned  to  serve  the  Church  faithfully 
and  long  in  their  native  country. 

The  Rev.  Henry  John  Burges,  after  his  return  from 
England,  was  minister  in  St.  Mary's  Parish,  Edgecombe, 
for  a  year  or  two.  He  then  moved  to  Virginia,  and  had  a 
school  in  Southampton  county  for  many  years,  where  a 
number  of  eminent  men  were  educated,  among  them  the  late 
Dr.  Simmons  J.  Baker  and  President  Win.  H.  Harrison. 
The  Rev.  Francis  Johnston  became  the  minister  of  Society 
parish,  Bertie,  and  Edward  Jones  of  St.  Stephen's  parish, 
Johnston  county.  Nathaniel  Blount  succeeded  the  Rev. 
Alexander  Stewart,  who  had  died  a  year  or  two  before 
Mr.  Blount's  ordination,  and  Mr.  Pettigrew,  after  a  short 
service  in  Berkely  parish,  Perquimans,  succeeded  the  Rev. 
Daniel  Earl  in  St.  Paul's  Church,  Edenton. 

Of  Mr.  Peter  Blinn  I  have  seen  no  account  after  the 
note  of  his  ordination  by  the  Bishop  of  London  in  Septem- 
ber, 1769.  It  may  be  that  he  did  not  live  to  take  up  the 
work  of  God  in  North  Carolina  as  a  minister.  Many  a 
noble  spirit  crossed  the  ocean  from  America  stirred  by  a 
holy  ambition  of  returning  as  a  herald  of  the  Cross,  to 
whom  God,  in  His  inscrutable  wisdom,  denied  that  privi- 
lege. The  perils  of  the  ocean,  the  accidents  of  travel,  the 
infectious  diseases  then  so  terribly  destructive,  the  great 
length  and  expense  of  the  journey,  all  these  were  a  sad 
hindrance  to  the  increase  of  the  number  of  native    Ameri- 


85 

can  ministers  upon  this  continent.  It  is  said  that  at  least 
ten  per  cent,  of  those  who  undertook  this  journey  for  ordi- 
nation died  without  having  been  able  to  return  to  take  up 
the  work.  Our  own  annals  contain  as  pathetic  a  story 
illustrating  these  difficulties  and  hardships  as  can  well  be 
imagined. 

Sometime  in  the  year  1768  Mr.  Edward  Jones,  of  the 
Province  of  North  Carolina,  applied  to  the  Rev.  George  Mic- 
klejohn  of  St.  Matthew's,  Hillsboro',  who  seems  to  have 
been  his  pastor,  and  laid  before  him  his  desire  to  serve  God 
in  the  holy  ministry.  Upon  examination,  Mr.  Micklejohn 
approved  his  purpose  of  offering  himself  as  a  candidate  for 
orders,  and  gave  him  such  information  as  he  could,  con- 
cerning the  time  required  for  the  journey,  the  expenses  of 
travel,  and  the  like.  Upon  consideration,  Mr.  Jones  found 
that  the  expense  of  travel  and  of  living  during  the  time  he 
must  remain  in  England,  would  require  a  much  larger 
sum  than  he  could  command;  but  as  he  had  set  this  holy 
calling  before  himself  as  the  work  of  his  life  he  determined 
to  keep  back  nothing.  He  therefore  sold  his  patrimony, 
notwithstanding  the  great  loss  incurred  thereby  in  the 
wretched  condition  of  our  Colonial  currency,  converted  the 
proceeds  into  available  funds,  and  provided  with  letters  and 
testimonials  from  the  Rev.  Mr.  Micklejohn,  he  set  out  for 
England.  In  due  time  he  arrived  at  Liverpool,  but  almost 
immediately  upon  landing  he  was  stricken  down  with  sick- 
ness, and  lay  for  a  long  time  helpless  and  suffering.  Grad- 
ually, as  he  lingered  on,  his  money  slipped  away  in  the 
many  expenses  of  lodging,  medicine  and  attendance,  so 
that,  when  able  once  more  to  resume  his  journey,  he  found 
himself  absolutely  penniless  and  alone  in  a  strange  land. 
He  set  out  however  to  make  the  rest  of  his  journey  on  foot, 
and  thus  made  his  way  to  London,  obtaining  a  scanty  sup- 
ply of  food  upon  the  journey  by  selling  such  articles  of 
clothing  as  were  not  indispensable.  Footsore  and  weary 
he  at   length  reached   London  and  made  his  way  to  the 


86 

residence  of  the  Bishop.  He  made  know  his  business, 
though  not  his  sad  plight,  and  laid  before  the  Bishop  the 
letter  and  papers  given  him  by  Mr.  Micklejohn.  These 
proved  to  be  in  some  way  informal  or  insufficient,  and  the 
Bishop  informed  him  that  he  must  communicate  with  his 
friends  in  North  Carolina,  and  procure  certain  other  docu- 
ments before  he  could  feel  justified  in  ordaining  him.  Mr. 
Jones,  at  this  mortifying  intelligence,  left  the  Bishop,  in 
utter  perplexity  and  discouragement.  He  wandered  about 
the  streets  in  a  state  of  desperation  bordering  on  insanity. 
He  afterwards  confessed,  with  expressions  of  shame,  that 
more  than  once  he  was  on  the  point  of  committing  suicide. 
Penniless  in  a  great  city,  of  all  places  the  most  solitary  to 
him  who  is  without  friends,  utterly  ignorant  of  places  and 
of  persons,  we  can  imagine  his  forlorn  state.  Whether 
this  lasted  a  day  or  several  days,  we  do  not  know.  He 
may  have  had  some  trifles  of  clothing  or  other  property  to 
dispose  of  to  keep  him  alive  a  day  or  two.  His  deliver- 
ance from  this  depth  of  woe  has  a  touch  of  romance  which 
sheds  a  soft  light  over  the  sad  picture.  While  in  the 
depth  of  his  misery,  he  hears  by  some  accident  that  Gov. 
Tryon  has  a  sister  in  London,  Miss  Tryon.  With  a  feeling 
which  a  North  Carolinian  can  still  understand,  it  comes 
to  him  that  she  must  be  interested  in  the  country  which 
her  brother  governs.  He  finds  out  her  abode  and  appeals 
to  her  sympathy  and  compassion.  He  had  not  judged 
amiss.  Miss  Tryon  responded  most  graciously  to  his  ap- 
peal, and  in  a  way  which  showed  her  tact  as  well  as  her 
generosity.  She  introduced  Mr.  Jones  to  a  certain  Capt. 
Collett,  who  had  been  in  North  Carolina,  and  they  at 
once  put  him  out  of  his  perplexity  and  distress  by  their 
friendly  interest  and  help.  He  wrote  to  Gov.  Tryon,  March 
29th,  1769,  giving  this  account  of  his  experience  since  he 
had  arrived  in  England,  and  requesting  the  Governor  to 
send  him  such  testimonials  as  should  meet  the  demands  of 
the  Bishop.      But  he  did  not  have  to  wait  for  an  answer  to 


37 

his  letter.  The  record  shows  that  Mr.  Edward  Jones  was 
licensed  for  North  Carolina  by  the  Bishop  of  London  on 
the  29th  of  May,  1769,  just  two  months  after  the  date  of 
his  letter  to  Gov.  Tryon.  And  very  shortly  thereafter  we 
find  him  minister  of  St.  Stephen's  Parish,  Johnston 
County.  We  may  be  very  sure  that  he  had  always  a  good 
word  for  the  gracious  ladies  of  the  Governor's  family. 

With  the  administration  of  Gov.  Martin  there  seems  to 
come  a  relaxing  of  the  tension  in  the  life  of  the  community, 
and  our  ecclesiastical  affairs  shared  the  general  languor. 
Whatever  may  be  thought  of  Tryon,  his  vigor  and  admin- 
istrative talents  are  not  denied.  Gov.  Martin  had  neither 
his  force  of  character  nor  his  address  in  the  management 
of  men.  Perhaps  the  very  eagerness  with  which  Gov. 
Tryon  had  pushed  the  work  of  supplying  vacant  parishes 
with  clergymen  caused  a  reaction  when  the  vigorous  hand 
was  removed  from  the  helm.  Almost  without  exception 
the  ministers  who  came  in  under  Tryon' s  administration 
were  men  of  force  and  of  zeal.  But  there  was  a  great 
temptation  to  relax  effort  in  a  country  where  there  was  no 
oversight  exercised ;  and  the  low  tone  of  feeling  and  living 
in  the  community  must  have  had  a  depressing  influence 
upon  the  clergy.  It  had  long  been  felt  by  persons  through- 
out the  Colonies  that  an  Episcopal  Church  without  a  Bishop 
was  an  absurdity.  The  question  need  not  be  discussed 
here.  I  will  only  say  that  the  need  of  a  Bishop  was 
apparent  both  to  our  Governors  and  to  the  clergy  them- 
selves. Time  and  again  they  wrote  to  the  Society  and  to 
the  Bishop  of  London  that  a  Bishop  was  absolutely  neces- 
sary in  order  to  the  success  of  the  Church  in  America. 
The  English  Bishops  saw  it.  George  III.  unlike  his  Han- 
overian predecessors,  loved  the  Church,,  and  was  a  most 
religious  and  exemplary  man.  He  would  gladly  have 
seen  the  Church  truly  established  in  America  and  organ- 
ized upon  the  Apostolic  model.  But,  as  under  his  grand- 
father, George   II. ,    Sir  Robert   Walpole  had  defeated  the 


88 

hopes  and  plans  of  such  great  men  as  Seeker,  Butler  and 
Berkely,  so  the  ministers  of  George  III.  hindered  and 
thwarted  every  scheme  devised  for  the  sending  of  Bishops 
to  the  Colonies.  To  the  miserable  union  of  Church  and 
State  in  England  we  owe  it  that  with  all  the  appeals  of 
our  clergy  and  of  our  Governors,  and  with  all  the  many 
acts  of  our  people  through  their  representatives  in  the 
General  Assembly  in  favor  of  the  Church,  the  Church  had 
never  its  proper  organization  or  constitution  in  the  Province 
of  North  Carolina.  The  Mother  Church  was  enslaved  and 
her  daughter  was  bound  with  her.  When  the  politi- 
cal changes  of  1776  put  an  end  to  the  civil  status  of  the 
Church,  so  thoroughly  had  State  patronage  done  its  evil 
work,  and  so  entirely  had  both  people  and  clergy  been 
taught  to  lean  upon  a  broken  reed,  that  while  a  majority 
of  the  people  of  the  State  were  nominally  her  children, 
and  our  great  men  of  North  Carolina  were  almost  without 
exception  her  own,  the  Church  stood  helpless,  blind,  para- 
lyzed. Not  until  all  the  men  who  came  out  of  Egypt  had 
died  in  the  wilderness  could  Israel  enter  into  the  Land  of 
Promise;  and  not  until  a  new  generation  of  churchmen 
had  grown  up  in  North  Carolina,  who  looked  upon  the 
Church  as  a  spiritual  kingdom,  could  any  permanent 
organization  be  effected,  or  the  upward  course  begun.  It 
is  a  significant  fact  that  the  Diocese  of  North  Carolina  was 
organized  just  seven  months  after  the  death  of  Nathaniel 
Blount,  the  last  survivor  of  our  Colonial  clergy. 

One  or  two  things  need  to  be  said  before  closing.  In 
the  first  place,  such  civil  recognition  as  was  given  to  the 
clergy  of  the  Church,  and  such  support  as  was  derived 
from  public  taxation,  was  given  by  the  people  of  North 
Carolina  themselves,  acting  through  their  representatives 
in  General  Assembly.  It  has  been  affirmed  by  grave  his- 
torians, and  repeated  by  all  the  generation  of  lesser 
writers,  that  the  clergy  of  the  Church  were  paid  by  the 
British  government.      This  view  is  presented  by  writers  of 


89 

our  local  history  and  biography  with  perfect  assurance  of 
its  truth.  There  is  not  one  particle  of  truth  in  it.  Our 
North  Carolina  people  did  what  was  done  in  giving-  the 
support  of  the  State  to  the  Church.  But  it  is  further  to  be 
remembered  that  the  laws  were  so  framed  that  they  were 
inoperative  except  in  those  communities  where  the  great 
body  of  the  people  were  attached  to  the  Church.  And 
lastly,  in  this  connection,  there  was  practically  no  discon- 
tent among  the  people.  We  have  the  testimony  of  the 
whole  body  of  the  Presbyterian  ministers,  the  largest  and 
most  intelligent  body  of  dissenters  in  the  Province,  that 
under  Tryon,  the  most  masterful  of  the  royal  govorners, 
they  enjoyed  the  blessings  of  good  government  and  civil 
and  religious  freedom,  according  to  the  conception  of 
religious  freedom  prevalent  at  that  day. 

Another  and  a  more  serious  popular  misapprehension 
needs  to  be  corrected.  It  is  frequently  alleged  that  the 
character  of  the  Colonial  clergy  explains  the  decay  of  the 
Church.  Now  from  the  nature  of  the  case  there  were  un- 
worthy ministers  during  colonial  times  as  there  have  been 
since.  And  the  want  of  any  supervision  of  the  clergy 
aggravated  the  evil.  But  it  is  a  most  gross  and  ground- 
less slander  to  represent  the  clergy  of  that  period  as  being 
on  the  whole  an  unworthy,  much  less  an  immoral  or  irre- 
ligious class.  I  have  not  consciously  omitted  in  this 
paper  the  name  of  one  clergyman  against  whom  there  is 
serious  evidence  of  grevious  misconduct,  nor  have  I  failed 
to  point  out  the  fact  that  there  were  charges  against  him. 
True  it  is  that  as  time  went  on,  and  various  religious 
bodies  grew  strong  in  the  State,  bodies  which  had  bitter 
prejudices  against  the  Church,  they  did  not  spare  the  repu- 
tation of  her  ministers,  living  or  dead.  There  are  yet 
clergymen  amongst  the  most  honored  in  our  conventions, 
who  can  remember  how  in  their  early  ministry  the  purest  life 
was  no  security  against  charges  of  immorality  and  dissipa- 
tion.     Happily  we  live  in  better  times.      Living  men  can 


9° 

live  down  slanders.  But  who  shall  protect  the  dead  ?  I 
have  studied  the  history  of  our  provincial  period  with 
some  attention.  I  have  sought  out,  as  well  as  I  could,  the 
scQnly  memorials  of  our  brethren  who  first  trod  these 
shores  as  ambassadors  for  Christ  and  stewards  of  the  mys- 
teries of  God.  And  while  I  have  seen  and  deplored  sins 
and  follies  here  and  there,  I  have  thanked  God  for  the  good 
examples,  the  faithful  labors,  the  persevering  zeal,  the 
holy  devotion,  of  many  of  those,  our  brethren,  who  having 
finished  their  course  in  faith,  do  now  rest  from  their 
labors. 


89 

our  local  history  and  biography  with  perfect  assurance  of 
its  truth.  There  is  not  one  particle  of  truth  in  it.  Our 
North  Carolina  people  did  what  was  done  in  giving  the 
support  of  the  State  to  the  Church.  But  it  is  further  to  be 
remembered  that  the  laws  were  so  framed  that  they  were 
inoperative  except  in  those  communities  where  the  great 
body  of  the  people  were  attached  to  the  Church.  And 
lastly,  in  this  connection,  there  was  practically  no  discon- 
tent among  the  people.  We  have  the  testimony  of  the 
whole  body  of  the  Presbyterian  ministers,  the  largest  and 
most  intelligent  body  of  dissenters  in  the  Province,  that 
under  Tryon,  the  most  masterful  of  the  royal  govorners, 
they  enjoyed  the  blessings  of  good  government  and  civil 
and  religious  freedom,  according  to  the  conception  of 
religious  freedom  prevalent  at  that  day. 

Another  and  a  more  serious  popular  misapprehension 
needs  to  be  corrected.  It  is  frequently  alleged  that  the 
character  of  the  Colonial  clergy  explains  the  decay  of  the 
Church.  Now  from  the  nature  of  the  case  there  were  un- 
worthy ministers  during  colonial  times  as  there  have  been 
since.  And  the  want  of  any  supervision  of  the  clergy 
aggravated  the  evil.  But  it  is  a  most  gross  and  ground- 
less slander  to  represent  the  clergy  of  that  period  as  being 
on  the  whole  an  unworthy,  much  less  an  immoral  or  irre- 
ligious class.  I  have  not  consciously  omitted  in  this 
paper  the  name  of  one  clergyman  against  whom  there  is 
serious  evidence  of  grevious  misconduct,  nor  have  I  failed 
to  point  out  the  fact  that  there  were  charges  against  him. 
True  it  is  that  as  time  went  on,  and  various  religious 
bodies  grew  strong  in  the  State,  bodies  which  had  bitter 
prejudices  against  the  Church,  they  did  not  spare  the  repu- 
tation of  her  ministers,  living  or  dead.  There  are  yet 
clergymen  amongst  the  most  honored  in  our  conventions, 
who  can  remember  how  in  their  early  ministry  the  purest  life 
was  no  security  against  charges  of  immorality  and  dissipa- 
tion.     Happily  we  live  in  better  times.      Living  men  can 


go 

live  down  slanders.  But  who  shall  protect  the  dead  ?  I 
have  studied  the  history  of  our  provincial  period  with 
some  attention.  I  have  sought  out,  as  well  as  I  could,  the 
sc3nLy  memorials  of  our  brethren  who  first  trod  these 
shores  as  ambassadors  for  Christ  and  stewards  of  the  mys- 
teries of  God.  And  while  I  have  seen  and  deplored  sins 
and  follies  here  and  there,  I  have  thanked  God  for  the  good 
examples,  the  faithful  labors,  the  persevering  zeal,  the 
holy  devotion,  of  many  of  those,  our  brethren,  who  having 
finished  their  course  in  faith,  do  now  rest  from  their 
labors. 


